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
Ryan Anderson
Planetary Geologist; USGS; Flagstaff, AZ
Michael Battalio
Atmospheric Scientist; Texas A&M University; College Station, TX
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
Ken Herkenhoff
Planetary Geologist; USGS; Flagstaff, AZ
Rachel Kronyak
Planetary Geologist; University of Tennessee; Knoxville, TN
Michelle Minitti
Planetary Geologist; Framework; Silver Spring, MD
Mark Salvatore
Planetary Geologist; University of Michigan; Dearborn, MI
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:
At times, it seems like fantasy that we have a nuclear-powered car exploring Mars and that I get to help that exploration, including today as the Science Operations Working Group Chair.
Curiosity continues her traverse across the lowermost portions of Vera Rubin Ridge, where she continues to investigate the interesting rock textures and colors ahead.
On Sol 1821, Curiosity successfully completed contact science activities at "Pennessewassee" and "Passadumkeag". Perhaps in an effort to get to more easily pronounceable rock targets, today's tactical team planned a nice long drive towards our next waypoint on Vera Rubin Ridge.
Communication ties our lives together. If phone or internet service goes out in our area, sometimes we have to put our lives on hold for a few minutes or a few hours. The same is true for Mars operations.
Curiosity's weekend "Brushfest" (link to Ken's weekend blog) paid off, revealing the stunning purple color of the rocks of this part of the Vera Rubin Ridge (VRR) hiding below the veneer of dust on their surfaces.
Planning for Curiosity this morning was a bit like reading a great mystery novel. There were several twists and turns along the way, but we eventually reached an exciting ending that will reveal "Whodunnit?" - or more accurately -- what geologic forces had done to shape this landscape billions of years ago.
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.
Today was an exciting day of planning as Curiosity continued her ascent up Vera Rubin Ridge. The focus of the weekend plan was on carefully documenting the changes in stratigraphy as we leave the Murray bedrock. Fortunately, we are privy to a bevy of interesting targets and contrasting colors.
Curiosity is on the steepest part of Vera Rubin Ridge that it will encounter along its climb. The machine is performing superbly, having driven a 28 meter distance yestersol and having climbed 18 meters vertical elevation in four planning sols.
Perhaps this long Labor Day weekend, you will find yourself on a hike that ends with a particularly steep stretch. On such a steep trail, you will simply want to concentrate on reaching the top of your destination and not be required to perform any other tasks.
Curiosity's drive on Sol 1801 brought us to an excellent location for some contact and remote science in today's 3-sol plan (setting up for a long Labor Day weekend). We'll kick off Sol 1802 with contact science (MAHLI + APXS) on the target called "Tyler," a region of Murray bedrock just in front of the rover.
Curiosity drove 23.3 meters over the weekend, bringing us even closer to the area we will ascend Vera Rubin Ridge. We have reached the point in the traverse where we are no longer headed east along the ridge, but instead are turning to the south where orbital data show the ridge has slopes shallow enough for Curiosity to climb.
Yesterday's drive went perfectly, putting us in a good position for a busy weekend plan. Curiosity will start off on Sol 1797 with a long (2h 45m) science block full of a variety of remote sensing.
Curiosity completed a 30.3 meter drive yestersol, climbing another 2.4 meters in elevation. The rover is still in a soil-dominated region near the base of "Vera Rubin Ridge."
Curiosity is now tantalizingly close to climbing up Vera Rubin Ridge. For the past several weeks we have been skirting around the ridge, documenting sedimentary structures and bedrock composition along the way as we work toward our intended ascent route.
After the excitement of a mid-planning solar eclipse yesterday, today was pretty uneventful! We had a nice long pre-drive science block which we stuffed with 2 ChemCam observations to measure the chemistry of targets "Boiler" and "Biljim" as well as a ChemCam image mosaic of the Vera Rubin Ridge.
Even though Curiosity did not drive the planned 15 meters yesterday evening (she only made it about 11 meters), she moved far enough down the road to get in good position to acquire a full high-resolution mosaic of Vera Rubin Ridge (VRR) over the weekend, which was the hope for yesterday's drive.
As Curiosity inches closer towards ascending Vera Rubin Ridge (VRR), the science team is continuing to be diligent in both characterizing the local surroundings while also looking ahead and imaging the ridge upon approach.
I was the Surface Properties Scientist, or SPS, on staff today. After completing a successful drive back to the strategic route to continue up the Vera Rubin Ridge, we arrived at a workspace filled with sand and a lone rock outcrop dubbed "Dumplings Island".
I had a busy day as the ESTLK. At the start of operations, we discovered that the drive yestersol faulted prematurely after about only 15 m, which was roughly half the expected distance.
MSL drove over 32 meters last weekend, to a sandy area with a few bedrock blocks, but ChemCam suffered an anomaly and was marked sick after the acquisition of the first RMI mosaic of Vera Rubin Ridge. The instrument is in a safe state and turned off, but no other ChemCam observations were successful last weekend.
For this three sol weekend plan, Curiosity sidled up to the base of the Vera Rubin Ridge (VRR), whose proximity is evidenced by the 12 degree upward tilt of the rover's parking position, for an extended suite of imaging of the ridge and its surroundings.
Following our month of conjunction and first full day of operations on Monday, we're finally ready to dust off the wheels and get back to driving towards Vera Rubin Ridge. Today was a pretty smooth day of planning, as we're still getting back into the swing of things.
Welcome back to the first full day of operations after conjunction and the fifth anniversary of landing! Curiosity remained healthy over the month long break, so without missing a beat, Curiosity is ready to resume the Vera Rubin Ridge imaging campaign and the trek up Mt. Sharp.
As the solar conjunction stand-down comes to an end, we are easing back into operations planning, focusing on Sol 1780, which will be planned in detail on Monday.
Planetary scientists take their vacations when the planets align. In our case it is because communications with Mars are blacked out when the red planet goes behind the sun. It is called a solar conjunction.
Today on Mars we planned a typical "drive sol" that involved a bit of pre-drive science followed by a drive and some post-drive untargeted observations.
The activities planned for Sol 1753 revolve around a quick "touch-and-go" chemistry measurement using the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) instrument on Curiosity's arm.
Following a jam-packed weekend of contact and remote science on some beautiful sand deposits, the GEO group opted for mostly remote observations in today's plan. ChemCam will target "Grogg Ledge," a small patch of Murray bedrock in front of the rover.
Curiosity has intentionally scuffed a nearby sand ripple, which has gifted the team with an exceptional view of the interior of these small sand deposits.
Another touch-and-go was strategically planned for today, and there is bedrock in the arm workspace, so the tactical science team selected a block named "Tupper Ledge" for contact science.
As is typical for Curiosity lately, today we planned a "touch-and-go" suite of activities for the rover. Today I served as the Science Operations Working Group Chair.
I was the Surface Properties Scientist, or SPS, on staff again today. After completing a successful drive, Curiosity arrived at a nice workspace to carry out the weekend plan.
Last evening (June 27) between 8pm and 9pm PDT, Curiosity drove approximately 34 meters to the east to position herself just north of a large field of ripples on her way closer to ascending the iron oxide-bearing Vera Rubin Ridge.
This past weekend, Curiosity continued to journey east along the contact between the lower portion of Vera Rubin Ridge and the Murray formation with a drive that was a little over 20 m long. Today we worked on planning two sols, Sol 1739 and Sol 1740.
Curiosity has presented us with another beautiful workspace following a 16.6 meter drive. The majority of this week's activities were focused on imaging Vera Rubin Ridge to observe its stratigraphic and structural relationship to the underlying Murray formation.
As this is my first time contributing to the MSL blog, I'd like to quickly introduce myself to you all. I'm Mark, an MSL Participating Scientist and a faculty member at Northern Arizona University, trained in geochemistry, spectroscopy, and remote sensing. I'm excited to help walk you all through the daily endeavors of this wonderful rover and mission!
After a busy day of contact science yesterday, today's plan was dedicated towards remote science and driving. As Mastcam PUL-1 today, I was fairly busy helping put together a suite of Mastcam images for Curiosity to take.
After a successful drive, our parking spot included a nice patch of Murray bedrock to allow us to perform contact science (MAHLI and APXS) in today's plan.
After great anticipation over the last few weeks, the drive in the current plan will bring us into position for stop 1 of our close look at the northern face of the hematite-bearing Vera Rubin Ridge.
On most weekends, Curiosity dedicates part of her efforts to do contact science - deployment of APXS, MAHLI, and sometimes the DRT - because multi-sol weekend plans have more time and power to fit in these more complex activities.
The SPS has an interesting job, in that the SPS helps Rover Planners (called RPs) assess the terrain around the rover with safety in mind, first and foremost.
Today was an interesting day of planning: because of an issue with the computer system responsible for processing data once it is received on Earth, Curiosity's images and other data from Sol 1718 didn't arrive until well into today's planning.
We are beginning to turn toward the east and southeast as we approach Vera Rubin Ridge with the Curiosity rover. After a busy and successful plan over the weekend, we weighed our priorities between using APXS to study the bedrock we’re driving over or drive farther along our path.
Unfortunately the Sol 1713 activities were not uplinked due to an issue at the DSN station, so today's plan is focused on recovering the activities that were planned yesterday.
Despite the holiday weekend, the science and engineering teams were greeted with a plethora of data from Curiosity when they started planning Sol 1712 - like your birthday and your favorite winter (gift-getting) holiday rolled into one.
Curiosity continues to drive through an otherworldly jumble of in-place bedrock, tilted rocks, sand with small ripples, and local pebbly debris piles. Vera Rubin Ridge continues to loom larger in the rover's forward view, although progress is somewhat slow due to the difficult terrain. Yestersol's drive was 16 meters.
After a 14.6 m drive, the GEO group decided against arm activities due to a lack of compelling targets and in deference to making the next drive longer.
The rover planners parked us in front of the one slab of outcrop - an island among ripples of sand - we could safely drive to from our Sol 1700 position, setting us up to continue our exploration of the Murray formation.
The road to Vera Rubin Ridge, a feature believed to be enriched in the mineral hematite, is getting steeper, so we are stopping frequently to study the composition of the bedrock beneath our wheels.
Today we planned two sols, 1693 and 1694. On the first sol, we will conduct a suite of remote science observations before driving away and resuming our trek up Mount Sharp.
Continuing the steady march up Mt. Sharp, Curiosity drove 18.3 m to bring us closer to a series of features being called megaripples, which are darker and larger ripples than were seen on the Bagnold Dunes.
Today was a day of tradeoffs. Should Curiosity focus on driving to get to a higher priority target sooner, or conduct contact science at the current location?
In the Sol 1673 drive, the rover planners aimed us for a nice curb of Murray bedrock which we could investigate with targeted science (with Mastcam and ChemCam) and contact science (with APXS, MAHLI and the dust removal tool (DRT)) over the weekend.
On Tuesday, the science team had a "soliday", a day without planning to allow the time when the science team plans activities on Earth to realign favorably with when the rover is ready to accept and execute those plans.
Our latest drive put us in position in front of the interesting"Moosehead Lake" outcrop with lots of veins and grey patches: plenty to keepCuriosity busy over the weekend! The Sol 1668 plan starts off with a nice longscience block.
The Sol 1664 drive was halted after the rover had driven less than 2 meters because the angle of the left bogie slightly exceeded the suspension limit.
Our drive away from the "Ogunquit Beach" sand dune location went well, taking us about 35 meters to the southwest and putting us in a good location to continue measuring the composition of the bedrock as we drive up Mt. Sharp.
Curiosity has been carrying out a great investigation at Ogunquit Beach, but we’re still working out some issues related to the drill feed, so the decision was made to drive away in today’s plan.
Over the weekend there was a problem with the Deep SpaceNetwork that we rely on to transmit commands to Curiosity, so the rover didn’treceive its instructions and instead went into "runout" mode, where itpatiently waits for commands and
Yesterday afternoon the downlink included some results of ongoing drill feed diagnostics that warrant a further look before proceeding with the dune campaign, so the arm activities from Sol 1652 were pulled from the plan and we did not drop-off to CheMin
Sol 1651 activities executed nominally, so today’s plan is focused on dropping off the fine-grained portion of "Ogunquit Beach" Scoop #1 (now named "OG1") to CheMin, and SAM analysis of OG1.
MSL drove a little over 20 meters on Sol 1645, toward the bigsand dune to the east that is the subject of a science campaign thatwill hopefully start next week.
The APXS will still be deployed on The Hop early on Sol 1645, and to avoid using battery power to heat up the arm, we'll wait until early afternoon to move it out of the way.
Sorry for the delayed posting! In the rush to get ready forthe Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), I forgot to post about the sol 1640-42 plan.
Planning was challenging this morning because of somenetwork issues at JPL, but the team figured out how to work around the problemand still managed to put together a good plan! We’ve been at Stop 3 of the dunecampaign (now known as "So
Yesterday’s short drive was successful, so we started todaywith the rover parked at stop #3 of the dune campaign and the rover’s arm up inthe "ready out" position.
Thankfully I wasn’t actually on duty today, because withdaylight savings time Arizona is now on West-coast time, and planning startedat 6:30am! In any case, the weekend plan was successful, and put us close tothe third stop of the curre
We had an early-morning (6 AM on the west coast!) start toplanning today, which was a bit painful but with the help of lots of caffeinewe put together another plan full of good science! The exciting news from the weekendplan is that the
MSL drove a little over 9 meters on Sol 1608, to get the vehiclecloser to Ireson Hill and the dark blocks that have rolled down from the top of the hill.
Yesterday’s plan went well, and ChemCam has run all of theplanned diagnostics and will be back in action tomorrow! Similar to yestersol’splan, the Sol 1603 plan begins with a pair of Mastcam observations which willbe repeated throughout
Wow, 1600 sols on Mars – that is quite an accomplishment! And we’re at an exciting point in the traverse as we approach the next segment of the Bagnold Dunes.
Looks like the team had some fun using the less desirable names for rock targets in today’s plan! These are all named after rock formations and geologic features from Bar Harbor, Maine.
After a 25-meter drive on Sol 1578, MSL is surrounded by more dark sand than usual, but there is enough rock exposed that we had a lot of science targets to choose from today.
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