Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Curiosity Front Hazcam Left B image acquired on Sol 1910, December 20, 2017.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Now in Sol 1911, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is “back on familiar ground,” reports Abigail Fraeman, a planetary geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The robot is near the targets “Lismore” and “Leadhills” that it imaged back on sol 1905.

Curiosity Rear Hazcam Left B photo taken on Sol 1910, December 20, 2017.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Closer look

“We drove here to take a closer look at the transition between the blue-gray and red rocks in order to understand the geologic processes that may be responsible for this color change,” Fraeman explains. “Since we pulled up right alongside this transition, we were able to plan a monster, 180 frame Mastcam stereo mosaic that will cover the entire area with very high-resolution color information.”

Curiosity Navcam Left B image acquired on Sol 1910, December 20, 2017.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Downlinking all of these frames from Mars to Earth may take some time, but there are opportunities to get big data downlinks from the rover during the upcoming holiday.

“I’m very much looking forward to spending the break,” Fraeman adds, “unwrapping the data bundles and seeing what’s there!”

Curiosity Navcam Left B image acquired on Sol 1910, December 20, 2017.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Rim shots

In addition to the projected awesome mosaic, Curiosity will also carry out environmental science observations including an atmospheric tau measurement to monitor dust in the atmosphere, a Mastcam crater rim extinction observation, and a dust devil survey.

The plan calls for the robot to collect Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam), Mastcam, Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS), and Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) closed cover data from targets named “Ben Loyal” and “Ben More.”

Curiosity Navcam Left B image taken on Sol 1910, December 20, 2017.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Back to “Laphroaig”

“Because we’re coming up on a long holiday plan, we want to be extra careful that the MAHLI dust cover doesn’t unintentionally get left open during the long command uploading break, so we’re not opening it in today’s plan. After all this wraps up, we will drive back towards the target “Laphroaig” that we imaged on sol 1905 to do additional follow-up investigations of some interesting, small scale features,” Fraeman explains.

Curiosity Mastcam Left image acquired on Sol 1909, December 19, 2017.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Wet chemistry

A final note: terrific news from Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Instrument Suite investigators. Their first wet chemistry experiment on Mars ran successfully, Fraeman points out.

“Over the last few sols, the SAM team mixed some of the sample we’ve been carrying around since our investigation at Ogunquit Beach with special chemicals called “derivatization agents” that are designed to make certain molecules easier to detect,” Fraeman concludes. “I’m looking forward to hearing the results of their experiment once they complete their analyses!”