NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has just started Sol 2722 operations.
Lucy Thompson, a planetary geologist at University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada explains that the primary focus of a two-sol plan is to prepare the drill bit assembly to dump the remaining “Edinburgh” drilled sample (portion to exhaustion), so that it can be analyzed in the upcoming weekend plan with the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) instruments for chemistry and texture respectively.
Sample delivery
Sample has successfully been delivered to both Curiosity’s internal Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction/X-Ray Fluorescence Instrument (CheMin) and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments, Thompson adds, and scientists are awaiting the results of the mineralogy and volatile/isotope chemistry, with the 3rd night of CheMin analysis in this plan.
“The Edinburgh sample represents the blocky, dark grey sandstone, pediment-capping unit that overlies the Murray mudstone,” Thompson reports. Science team members are interested to see how the mineralogy and chemistry might differ between these two rocks types, given that they were likely deposited in different environments.