Sols 4045-4055: This Plan is STUFFED

Earth planning date: Friday, December 22, 2023

Many of us over the holidays like to celebrate with friends and family over a lengthy meal, looking back over the year that has been, and forward to the year to come. Curiosity’s holiday plans could be thought of as similar, albeit instead of food, with a steady diet of science. The eleven (!) sol holiday plan is built like a finely-constructed gourmet meal: full of quality, well-paced, and extremely satisfying.

Sols 4045-4048 are our aperitf, an opening sip of regular REMS and RAD measurements across the Martian day and night. On Sol 4049 we enjoy appetizers both atmospheric and geologic to sate all tastes. DAN passive will run in two long blocks, APXS will sample the argon in the Martian air, Mastcam and Navcam will assess the amount of dust in the air, and Navcam will look for clouds. The delightful looking structures of "Crescent Meadow" and "Sawtooth Peak" will be captured by Mastcam in large mosaics, and we will get our first look at the sand ripple target "Tubatulabal," which will also show up later in the menu.

We scarcely have time to recover from the wondrous variety of the main course before dessert arrives on Sol 4054. Dessert has something for every sweet tooth. We will image Tubatulabal again to see how the wind has moved the sand from our appetizer imaging effort, and ChemCam will analyze the layers of the "Iceberg Lake" target. We get a bit of a break partway through the course to get up and stretch our legs with a short drive to Crescent Meadow. But after the drive we get a few more sweets with a MARDI twilight image, another taste of atmospheric argon by APXS, and Navcam and Mastcam dust and cloud observations.

Sols 4050-4052 are our palate cleanser with plentiful but wafer thin REMS and RAD blocks giving us a break before the main course on Sol 4053. The main course is an extravaganza of atmospheric, targeted, and contact science, full of rich complexity. We start with Navcam dust devil movies, move to ChemCam on "Red and White Mountain," one of the intriguing ridges cutting the workspace bedrock, and then to a long distance ChemCam RMI mosaic on our ever-looming friend, the Gediz Vallis Ridge. MAHLI and APXS join the feast with paired analyses on another one of the workspace ridges, "Lewis Creek," and a variegated gray and red layer in the workspace, "Moose Lake."

Sol 4055 wraps up the meal up with a disgestif of REMS and RAD that will also serve as a toast to the new year. The next time we build a plan, it will be 2024! To Curiosity and her whole team - salute!

Written by Michelle Minitti, Planetary Geologist at Framework