Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Curiosity Front Hazcam Left B image acquired on Sol 2496, August 14, 2019.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2497 tasks.

Curiosity is go for analyzing a new drill sample, reports Ashley Stroupe, a mission operations engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

After seeing that the redo of the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Instrument Suite preconditioning in Monday’s plan was successful, the SAM team was ready to drop-off four portions to SAM for evolved gas analysis.

Curiosity Rear Hazcam Left B photo taken on Sol 2496, August 14, 2019.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Targeted science

“The power demands of SAM left little room for other activities on the first sol of the plan, but we were able to fit in some additional science on the second sol,” Stroupe adds.

In the afternoon of sol 2498, the plan called for the robot to do targeted science, including Mastcam and Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam), of the targets “Liberton” and “Torberg” to get the chemistry of the other plates near the drill target.

Curiosity Mastcam Right image taken on Sol 2495, August 13, 2019.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Additional analysis

“There are also some standard environmental observations, such as Mastcam tau and crater rim extinction imaging and Navcam imaging to search for dust devils clouds,” Stroupe notes.

Navcam image shows the view of the Mount Sharp summit from Curiosity’s current location. Navcam Right B image taken on Sol 2495, August 13, 2019.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Also planned was obtaining another data readout from the Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction/X-Ray Fluorescence Instrument (CheMin) on the sample dropped off on Monday.

“The results of the SAM analysis will be available prior to planning on Friday, and based on those results, the SAM team will determine whether to do additional analysis on the Glen Etive drill sample in the weekend plan,” Stroupe adds.