NASA's Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Right Navigation Cameras (Navcams) on Sol 1812 Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
As we've seen from the past several weeks and months of imaging, Curiosity's approach to and ascent of the Vera Rubin Ridge (VRR) has provided us with stunning views of the Mount Sharp terrain. Our parking spot after this weekend's drive was no exception, seen in the Navcam image above. In today's plan we are continuing our trek up the lower strata of the VRR and have no shortage of multi-colored bedrock targets to image and analyze.
Today we planned two sols. On Sol 1814, we planned a touch-and-go (APXS analysis + full suite of MAHLI images) on the dark bedrock target "Pumpkin Nob." Additional science block activities include a corresponding ChemCam raster and Mastcam image of Pumpkin Nob. We'll also perform a multispectral Mastcam observation on "Weymouth Point," a region of VRR terrain just ahead of Curiosity. Following a drive, we'll take our standard post-drive images and DAN active observation. On Sol 1815, we have a short mid-day science block, during which ENV will conduct a suprahorizon movie and dust devil survey. ENV also has its standard REMS observations.
About this Blog
These blog updates are provided by self-selected Mars Science Laboratory mission team members who love to share what Curiosity is doing with the public.
Dates of planned rover activities described in these reports are subject to change due to a variety of factors related to the Martian environment, communication relays and rover status.
Contributors
Sterling Algermissen
Mission Operations Engineer; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA
Atmospheric Scientist; Texas A&M University; College Station, TX
Kristen Bennett
Planetary Geologist; USGS; Flagstaff, AZ
Fred Calef
Planetary Geologist; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA
Brittney Cooper
Atmospheric Scientist; York University; Toronto, Canada
Sean Czarnecki
Planetary Geologist; Arizona State University; Tempe, AZ
Lauren Edgar
Planetary Geologist; USGS; Flagstaff, AZ
Christopher Edwards
Planetary Geologist; Northern Arizona University; Flagstaff, AZ
Abigail Fraeman
Planetary Geologist; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA
Scott Guzewich
Atmospheric Scientist; NASA/GSFC; Greenbelt, MD
Samantha Gwizd
Planetary Geologist; University of Tennessee; Knoxville, TN
Ken Herkenhoff
Planetary Geologist; USGS; Flagstaff, AZ
Rachel Kronyak
Planetary Geologist; University of Tennessee; Knoxville, TN
Sarah Lamm
Planetary Geologist; LANL; Los Alamos, NM
Michelle Minitti
Planetary Geologist; Framework; Silver Spring, MD
Claire Newman
Atmospheric Scientist, Aeolis Research; Pasadena, CA
Catherine O’Connell
Planetary Geologist; University of New Brunswick; New Brunswick, Canada
Melissa Rice
Planetary Geologist; Western Washington University; Bellingham, WA
Mark Salvatore
Planetary Geologist; University of Michigan; Dearborn, MI
Susanne Schwenzer
Planetary Geologist; The Open University; Milton Keynes, U.K.
Ashley Stroupe
Mission Operations Engineer; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA
Dawn Sumner
Planetary Geologist; University of California Davis; Davis, CA
Vivian Sun
Planetary Geologist; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA
Roger Wiens
Geochemist; LANL; Los Alamos, NM
Tools on the Curiosity Rover
The Curiosity rover has tools to study clues about past and present environmental conditions on Mars, including whether conditions have ever been favorable for microbial life. The rover carries:
The planning day began with an interesting result from the previous plan's ChemCam RMI analysis of a target that was referred to as "Pettegrove Point Foreign Object Debris" (PPFOD), and speculated to be a piece of spacecraft debris.
In today's plan, Curiosity begins analysis of the long-awaited Pettegrove Point drill sample at the "Stoer" target, which was successfully collected last week.
On our third attempt at drilling within the Pettegrove Point member on the Vera Rubin Ridge, we have success! Curiosity has successfully drilled, and generated a pile of drill tailings.
After a weekend full of contact science, remote science, and driving, Curiosity arrived at her next drill site within the Pettegrove Point member. Our previous two drilling attempts within the Pettegrove Point member haven't been as successful as we'd have hoped; the rocks in this area are much harder than we're used to - all the more reason to acquire and analyze a drill sample. We're hopeful that our third drilling attempt does the trick!
Curiosity is currently preparing to bump to her next drill site in the Pettegrove Point member, but not before gathering many observations at our current location.
Curiosity is currently on her way to a potentially softer rock target to drill in the Pettegrove Point member of Vera Rubin Ridge. Today was a late slide sol, which means we had to wait until 11am PDT for the downlink to arrive. Unfortunately, we didn't get our downlink today from MRO.
On Sol 2128, Curiosity will continue toward our third potential drill site within the Pettegrove Point member of Vera Rubin Ridge, where we are hoping to find slightly softer rocks. The day will begin with ChemCam observations of the target "Slioch," which was already analyzed by APXS, as well as the layered rock "Craignure Bay."
Curiosity completed its drive successfully after the science team regrouped from the incomplete drill, which required a different than anticipated weekend plan.
Our attempt at drilling the target "Ailsa Craig" was partly successful: the drill behaved exactly as it was supposed to, but unfortunately we weren't able to drill very deep. The rock here is just too hard! Since we didn't get a nice deep drill hole, the plan for the weekend is to do some final observations at this location and then move on another location to try again.
Yesterday, the science team chose a new drill target, "Ailsa Craig," and we spent the day triaging the target with our contact science instruments, DRT, MAHLI, and APXS.
Mars dealt us a winning hand today, yielding a sufficiently flat parking space after yesterday's short bump to allow us to proceed with our plan to drill in this part of the "Vera Rubin Ridge."
Curiosity made great progress yesterday across the "Vera Rubin Ridge" toward the site of our next drilling attempt at "Sgurr of Eigg". In this weekend plan, we will collect more data about the ridge materials around us, and the sky above us, before embarking on a ~12 m drive to Sgurr of Eigg.
The priorities for Sol 2115 are to image the rover's wheels and acquire the images needed to plan a drive back to the Sol 1999 location, where we might start another drilling campaign.
After our attempt to drill the Voyageurs target did not reach sufficient depth due to the impressive hardness of the rock, the team is beginning to finish up its activities at this location before heading a bit further uphill to find a more suitable (i.e., softer) drill target.
Unfortunately, we found out this morning that the "Voyageurs" drill target was a much harder rock than expected. While our drill plan executed perfectly, our bit stopped short of the full depth we need for sampling.
I first became involved with Curiosity shortly after starting my third year of graduate school in the fall of 2011. My graduate advisor was selected to join the mission as a Participating Scientist, and he enlisted me to help analyze orbital data over Mt. Sharp as part of that role.
After being out of commission for over a year, Curiosity's drill is making not just a comeback, but a strong one, with imminent plans for a second drill hole within the span of 60 sols.
The image above shows the Mastcam view as of Sol 2104, in which the nearby terrain is clearly visible, but nothing beyond the foreground, and the entire scene looks a murky red-brown color due to the dust storm.
While the rest of us are enjoying fireworks, BBQs, and spending time with friends and family, Curiosity will remain hard at work over this Fourth of July holiday.
Curiosity is back on top of the Vera Rubin Ridge once more, having completed our drive over the weekend as we move toward our next drilling target in the "Pettegrove Point" geological member.
Curiosity stopped its drive a bit earlier than anticipated. It so happens that the autonomous software onboard Curiosity designed to keep it driving safely kicked in and ended the drive short of the planned distance.
Despite the global dust storm (more correctly known as a "planet encircling dust event") darkening the skies, our nuclear-powered rover continues to do good science.
Over the past week or so, Curiosity has experienced increasingly dusty conditions in Gale crater. Unlike her older cousin Opportunity on the other side of the planet, Curiosity is not solar powered and, therefore, doesn't suffer from the same power issues resulting from the darkening skies that Opportunity does.
Curiosity pulled away from the "Duluth" site yesterday, but given the blocky nature of the "Blunts Point" member and the sand in between those blocks, she did not get far.
The final several sols of Curiosity's drill activities at "Duluth" are devoted mostly to imaging and to analysis of the pile of drill tailings that are dumped on the ground after the delivery to the instruments.
On Earth we have multiple means of communication-cell phone, text messages, land line, e-mail, and good old snail mail. On Mars the rover basically has three-a UHF antenna that communicates with satellites orbiting Mars, a low-gain antenna (LGA) that does not need to be pointed but only handles a low data flow, and a high-gain antenna (HGA) that requires accurate knowledge of Earth's position to receive or send commands directly.
Over the weekend, an error cropped up during a regular test of the high gain antenna actuators, leaving the antenna unavailable for uplink of today's plan, but otherwise healthy.
Today we planned a weekend's worth of activities for Curiosity. For our weekend plan, we have two main priorities: perform another analysis with CheMin on our Duluth drill sample and continue our campaign of dust storm monitoring.
Today, Sol 2075, was a fairly straightforward day of planning, as most of the plan will be devoted to carrying out a methane experiment with our SAM instrument to analyze an atmospheric sample.
Today we received the happy news that the SAM instrument received enough sample to conduct its "evolved gas" analysis of the powdered rock from our "Duluth" drill hole!
The previous plan included some tests of the sample delivery system, including delivery of a single portion to the closed cover of the SAM inlet. The imaging showed a small amount made it, but not as much as we'd hoped.
Some of the Duluth drill sample was dropped into CheMin on Sol 2061, but not enough for a proper mineralogical analysis. So the top priority for today's plan is to again test the new drop-off procedure.
After successfully drilling the "Duluth" target on Sol 2057 (as seen in the above Mastcam image), the science team is eager to find out what it's made of. As SOWG Chair today, it was exciting to plan the drop-off of material to CheMin and overnight CheMin analysis. Hopefully we'll get some good data about the mineralogy of this sample!
I was excited to learn earlier this week that my native city was chosen as the name of the latest drill site on Mars! The name was selected by geologists on the mission to recognize the Duluth Complex, one of the largest intrusions of gabbro on Earth, along the north shore of Lake Superior.
Our sol 2054 plan was limited by a small morning downlink. Occasionally, the flight paths of the Mars orbiters over Gale Crater don't have favorable geometries for relays with Curiosity, and this means our data downlink passes are smaller than average. Today we received only 1.6 MB (Megabytes) of data at the start of our planning day.
A successful drive on Sol 2052 brought Curiosity within bumping distance of what will likely be our next intended drill target. The science team named this target "Duluth." Duluth is a beautifully exposed Murray formation block visible in the Navcam image above. From our current location, we have a really nice vantage point of both the top and sides of the Duluth block. Analyzing blocks that have this kind of 3-D expression gives us a great opportunity to assess the full architecture of the rock.
Rather than driving almost 11 meters, Curiosity only drove about 1/2 meter before stopping. So, we found ourselves looking at images of previous wheel tracks and contact science targets rather than a new location.
Curiosity is currently investigating the Blunts Point member of the Murray formation, and searching for a suitable location to drill in the near future.
Today is the third and final day that I'm serving as SOWG Chair this week at JPL, and I was happy to see that the bump we originally planned for Sol 2046 completed successfully on Sol 2047, placing the rover in a good position for contact science on a couple of bright blocks in front of the rover.
In Curiosity-speak, a "bump" is a short drive the rover performs to better position itself for a particular science investigation (often contact science with the rover's arm). Yestersol's plan intended to include such a bump to reach a suitable target for contact science, but unfortunately the drive did not execute.
As Curiosity continues to descend the Vera Rubin Ridge and back into the Murray formation, the science team is doing their best to characterize, for a second time, all of the structural, chemical, and spectral variations originally seen as we climbed up the ridge.
The drive planned on sol 2045 will take Curiosity off of Vera Rubin Ridge and back into the broken-up rocks that comprise the Blunt's Point member of the Murray formation.
Curiosity continued her journey off of the "Vera Rubin Ridge," driving west along the ridge flank toward a passable route down to the bedrock north of the ridge. Her stop today may have been brief, but it was ehhhhhhxcellent.
Following some fantastic preliminary imaging from yestersol, today's plan (Sol 2039) is dedicated to additional imaging of "Red Cliff" before continuing to drive toward a location where we think we are likely to drill. We have a short science block to start the day, during which we'll use Mastcam to take some context imaging of our surroundings and upcoming terrain.
Curiosity continues to pick her way downhill off the "Vera Rubin Ridge" and onto the Murray formation rocks below. This weekend's plan only covers two sols, to give Earth planning time and Mars time a chance to realign so that the science team is not up in the middle of the night commanding the rover.
Curiosity is continuing her march to the north and west, descending through the stratigraphic layers exposed in Vera Rubin Ridge and working her way back towards the unit known as the Blunts Point member, just below the ridge.
Curiosity drove a little over 16 m to the west this weekend. The rover is currently skirting around the southern edge of a small, blocky impact crater on its way north off the Vera Rubin Ridge.
This drive was remarkable because it marked a shift in Curiosity's strategic campaign: we have officially finished our initial reconnaissance of Vera Rubin Ridge, and we are beginning our journey down off the ridge, heading north into an area where we would like to test the rover's drill.
This was a week of transition for Curiosity's environmental science team. The cloudy season on Mars has ended as we've seen a marked decrease in water ice cloud activity in our Navcam sky movies over the last several weeks and we're moving quickly into the dusty season on Mars.
Over the weekend Curiosity completed a 13 meter drive from some interesting float rocks including some potential breccias to "Suilven Ripple", a sand ripple where it will characterize the grain sizes and ripple morphology. Today is a 2-sol plan with no drive.
The top science priority for this plan is to acquire all of the data needed to adequately characterize the rocks at the current location before driving away.
For the past few sols Curiosity has been exploring a diverse assemblage of cobbles and boulders on Vera Rubin Ridge, trying to understand how this blocky deposit came to be, and what the variety of rock types can tell us about geologic processes in Gale crater.
Like Harry Potter in Honeydukes or Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, Curiosity rolled up to the proverbial candy store today, wondering "where to begin?!" The variety of rock types in the workspace, the likes of which had not been seen for many hundreds of sols, made picking favorites a challenge.
For much of the last year, Curiosity has been exploring fine-grained rocks along Vera Rubin Ridge, and investigating red and gray color variations. Recently, something else caught our eye: dark cobbles and boulders exposed in patches, as seen in the above Mastcam image.
After failing to pass SRAP (the process that makes sure the rover is safe to use its arm) on the previous sol, we finished up the set of observations possible at this location.
After the weekend drive, the rover ended up in a spot that was a little too unstable to pass the Slip Risk Assessment Process (SRAP). That means that there is a slight chance that the rover's footing might shift if the robotic arm is extended, which is not ideal for the safety of our contact science instruments, so for the Sol 2011 plan we chose not to use the arm and instead focused on remote sensing.
After completing a nearly 55m drive, Curiosity found itself sitting right in the middle of the strongest spectral detection of hematite identified along its path up Mt. Sharp.
For Sol 2004, Curiosity threw it back to the 2004's sleeper hit Mean Girls when the rover said, "Stop trying to make 'drive' happen." The weekend drive stopped after just a few meters due to a high current warning from the right middle wheel.
Today marks a milestone for Curiosity. Our trusty Martian rover has spent 2000 sols exploring Gale Crater helping to unravel the geologic history preserved in the rocks.
Today was a fairly quiet day of planning on Mars, the reason being that most of the MSL science team is currently attending the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in Houston, Texas.
As we drive east across the top of "Vera Rubin Ridge" - backwards no less! - we encountered another nice patch of bedrock in Curiosity's workspace today, motivating multiple observations before we hit the road once again.
After a successful weekend plan, the team decided that for the sol 1991-1992 plan, we would trade a longer-distance drive in favor of some "touch and go" contact science. This ensures that we have a good record of the variations in chemistry and rock texture as we drive along the Vera Rubin Ridge.
Seasons make a big difference for Mars vistas. Tosol Mars is at solar longitude 139, meaning that it is halfway between winter solstice and spring equinox in the southern hemisphere where Curiosity resides.
Last week when the first Vera Rubin Ridge drill-hole attempts turned out to be too shallow at "Lake Orcadie", discussion in the team turned to the question of, "How hard is that rock?
Vera Rubin Ridge is as hard as a rock! After two drilling attempts, Curiosity's drill was not able to dig into the bedrock sufficiently to collect a sample of rock at this location.
All of the data returned for the second drill target, called "Lake Orcadie 2," support the decision to attempt to acquire sample at that location using feed-extended drilling.
Today, Sol 1980, we're taking a break from drilling activities to continue with our remote science campaign at our current location. We have three science blocks in today's plan, which we've filled to the brim with a variety of observations.
It is an exciting time for the Curiosity team. Although the drill was able to create a hole, Mars stubbornly refused to let the drill reach a depth where a rock sample could be collected and has driven Curiosity away from "Lake_Orcadie".
The tactical planning schedule was delayed by 2 hours today so that we would have the latest data from Sol 1977 available for planning. When the data arrived, it quickly became clear that the feed-extended drilling did not complete as planned.
Curiosity has returned to its primary mission of drilling rocks on Mars in an attempt to rescue critical science on the Vera Rubin Ridge from the clutches of vile mechanical failures.
Curiosity is officially go for drilling the "Lake Orcadie" target! After more than a year's wait for the drill to come back online, the rover planners and engineers are confident and ready to proceed with a test of a new drilling method in the coming days.
Over the weekend, Curiosity successfully off-loaded the sample she acquired previously, the "Ogunquit Beach" sand sample, in preparation for what the science team hopes is acquisition of a new *drilled* rock sample very soon.
The DRT brushing of the potential drill target completed successfully, as did SAM's recent analysis of the Ogunquit Beach sample, and the rover is healthy and ready for more!
We are planning 2 sols today to get a head start on the holiday weekend planning. We had several options today, including mobility and contact science with or without brushing, which made for an interesting day for me as SOWG Chair.
For the last several months, the science, engineering and operations teams have only met three days a week to plan activities for Curiosity in order to give the engineers more time to focus on bringing the drill back online.
Like yesterday, today's plan is a bit on the thin side, as the rover's power allotment will be primarily dedicated to activities associated with the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) and its preparation for a planned power-hungry experiment in tomorrow's plan.
Over the weekend Curiosity drove ~52 m to the northeast to another patch of gray bedrock. The team is interested in characterizing the gray bedrock to determine if we might want to drill here.
Recovering from the SAM fault proved more challenging than expected, so our planned drive to the patch of pale tan bedrock in the image above did not take place. We took advantage of the fact that we have been parked at this same site for several sols to acquire both new and less-common types of observations.
Over the past several months we've made excellent progress up and along the Vera Rubin Ridge (VRR), taking stunning mosaics and using our instrument payload to examine the local geology. Today we planned for Sols 1957-1958, during which we will continue our VRR investigations and drive further along to our next area of interest. Unfortunately, SAM experienced a minor fault over the weekend, so we'll be delaying those activities - a preconditioning test for an upcoming geochronology experiment - to Wednesday's (Sol 1959) plan.
Along with many of my MSL colleagues, I'm attending our semi-annual science team meeting, enjoying the presentations and discussion of recent results and plans for the future.
We are back on Vera Rubin Ridge today after a short diversion into the phyllosilicate unit. Our workspace this morning contained rocks in various shades of red. The remote sensing and contact science observations we planned today are designed to investigate the chemistry, spectral properties, and fine scale textures associated with these color changes.
Going in to planning today, there was a concern that we would run up against constraints on power and complexity that might force us to eliminate some of the science we wanted to do.
Curiosity diverted from our primary "Mount Sharp Ascent Route" a couple weeks ago as we continued to investigate the outcrops of bluish-toned rock that are scattered around this region of the Vera Rubin Ridge.
Having spent 1943 sols on the surface of Mars, Curiosity is in its 6th Earth year on Mars, but it is in its 3rd Mars year of exploration. That means Curiosity has encountered this season of the year twice before.
We're sorry, but we will not be posting updates to this blog during the government shutdown. Also, all public NASA activities and events are cancelled or postponed until further notice. We'll be back as soon as possible! Sorry for the inconvenience.
Today's two-sol plan will wrap up activities at Vera Rubin Ridge location "e." When we assessed the downlink data this morning, we were excited to see that ChemCam did a great job with some very precise pointing in the previous plan. At location "e" we have been focused on understanding small-scale features, like the tiny crystals and veins seen in the above ChemCam RMI image.
Today we're continuing our science activities at the Vera Rubin Ridge (VRR) location "e." It certainly seems that "e" should stand for "exciting," as we've collected quite a rich set of observations at this location, including extensive imaging and geochemical analyses.
What's in a name? From its rather innocuous sounding informal site name, you might not guess that location "e" would generate such excitement in the science team. The first thing the science team on shift did was decide to stay at the current location rather than drive away. This was primarily driven by the large suite of excellent science targets available in the workspace. These targets continue to help constrain the geologic story of the Vera Rubin Ridge.
Curiosity has made it to "Region e" of the Vera Rubin Ridge (VRR) campaign. This location is a slight depression with exposed fractured bedrock that appears more "blue" from orbit than the surrounding region. In addition, the orbital evidence and observations from the ground suggest that this location is similar to "Region 10" that we visited just last week.
For the last several weeks, Curiosity has been hopping between areas of blue-ish toned rocks on the Vera Rubin Ridge and the results from these locations continue to become more compelling.
Today's image is a color version of part of the workspace image from the Sol 1925-1926 blog, which shows in greater detail the numerous layers and color variations that kept us at this spot for another round of science observations.
Curiosity's hard work over the holiday break paid off, giving the science team a rich collection of new data to assess and a new workspace to explore. The science team certainly got the year off to a bang with a very full plan at our new parking spot!
There's no real rest for the rover. We planned sols 1921-1924 on December 22 and 29. Earlier, the team had planned a minimal set of activities for the rover to carry out over Sols 1913-1920, letting the science and engineering teams spend a bit of time away from work.
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