Sols 1528-1530: Fifteen Kilometers!

Our weekend plan went as expected, including a ~16 meter
drive which brings us to our next drill target: "Precipice". That drive also
brings our total drive distance from Bradbury Landing to just over 15 km! We
have a three sol plan today as we head into the long holiday weekend and
prepare for drilling next week.

On Sol 1528, Mastcam has a 3x10 mosaic to provide context
for the drill site, followed by ChemCam images of the drill bit and a MARDI twilight
image of the ground beneath the rover. On the following sol, Navcam and Mastcam
start the day with a set of atmospheric observations to watch for dust devils and
measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere. After that, ChemCam has a passive
sky observation, followed by active measurements of the targets "Thomas Bay", "The
Anvil", and "The Ovens". Mastcam then has a change detection observation on the
targets "Hulls Cove" and "Big Heath" along with documentation of the ChemCam
targets, including the AEGIS target from sol 1526. Mastcam and Navcam will then
repeat some of the atmospheric observations from the morning.

In contrast to our busy Sol 1529, sol 1530 will be
relatively quiet, with a focus on downlinking data and our normal background
data collection from REMS and DAN. by Ryan Anderson -Ryan is a planetary scientist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center and a member of the ChemCam team on MSL. 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