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Sols 3176-3177: It’s a Beautiful Day on Mars, Let’s Plan Two!

This is a black and white image of the rocky surface on Mars. In the center of the image there is a small dune of sand and rock.There is also another much darker rock to the left. In the background the smoothness of the sand and hills is displayed.

This image was taken by Right Navigation Camera onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 3174.

NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Baseball starts its All Star Break today, but in the grand tradition of the doubleheader, the MSL team decided to plan two sols where only one was scheduled!

In our double-size plan today, we have a stacked lineup of science observations. Leading off, ChemCam and Mastcam go back-to-back with shots to the target "Berbiguieres." Our big bat in the middle of the lineup today is SAM, which turns up the heat for an evolved gas analysis of the recently drilled "Pontours" sample.

Of course we always have to keep an eye on the weather, so we take a break for Navcam to look for dust devils and observe the horizon. Confident that we won't be rained out, we move back up to the top of the lineup. And the hits just keep coming with Mastcam images of target "Lolme" and the "Pontours" drill hole. Then ChemCam and Mastcam get their shots in again, this time on target "Proumeyssac." We round out our All-Star lineup with standard background data collection from DAN, REMS, and RAD.

Written by Sean Czarnecki, Planetary Geologist at Arizona State University