NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover recently made a small bump, moving into position to examine “Edinburgh” – a potential drill target.
Over last weekend, the plan called for use of the Dust Removal Tool on Edinburgh and observe the target with Curiosity’s Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam), the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS), the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), and Mastcam’s multispectral filters.
Full drill or move on?
“We will analyze these observations to help make a decision on Monday about whether we want to continue with a full drill in this area or move on,” reports Abigail Fraeman, a planetary geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Other last weekend planning involved other geology-focused activities, including ChemCam observations of targets named “Tentsmuir,” “Glen Finglas,” and “Glen Feshie,” along with a 19×2 Mastcam mosaic of the robot’s surroundings.
Measuring argon
“We will also conduct a series of environmental science investigations that include a measure of the amount of argon in the atmosphere using APXS, a dust devil survey, and several Navcam observations of far-away targets to characterize the amount of dust in the atmosphere,” Fraeman adds.
Lastly, the rover will take of number of MAHLI images of the surface in front of the Mars machinery at different angles in order to understand how reflected light behaves with different viewing geometries, Fraeman concludes.