Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3329, December 17, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 3329 duties.

“Our Sol 3326 drive was successful, completing our shot through the Maria Gordon notch, with its spectacular structures and deep shadows, and continuing our climb up Mount Sharp,” reports Michelle Minitti, a planetary geologist at Framework in Silver Spring, Maryland.

To keep the rover’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) safe over the upcoming holiday break, a recent plan was the last chance to take images with MAHLI’s cover open until researchers plan the sols post-holiday, so the team was on the hunt for a good target.

Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Left B image acquired on Sol 3329, December 17, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Thin, gray vein

For MAHLI and the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS), scientists started trying to target one of the thin, gray vein features cutting across the bedrock directly in front of the rover.

“However, their small size and the topography on and around them prevented the arm from gaining easy access to them. So we pivoted to some of the flatter bedrock off the right front wheel of the rover and landed on “Korskellie” for MAHLI and APXS analysis,” Minitti adds. The robot’s Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) was, and will be, busy off the rover’s starboard side, as well.

Curiosity Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) photo taken on Sol 3329, December 17, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL

New drive

After a new drive brought Curiosity to a new location, ChemCam used its autonomous targeting capabilities to shoot a target on the right of the rover.

“As we were planning, we did not know exactly where that raster hit, but given the expanse of bedrock available, we assumed we already had one bedrock analysis in the bag,” Minitti explains. “That allowed us to add a little variety to the nature of the targets for today. We selected ‘Achentoul,’ another bedrock target but one that appeared to cross a color change in the bedrock. We also selected ‘Carragheen,’ a round, roughly ping pong ball-sized resistant feature standing proud above the bedrock.”

Curiosity Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) photo taken on Sol 3329, December 17, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL

Cliffs and buttes

The rover’s terrain has been increasingly scattered with gray rounded features presumably shed from the local bedrock, so Carragheen will give scientists a chance to investigate one of these features on-the-spot.

“We were still close enough to the cliffs and buttes that form Maria Gordon notch that they got lots of imaging attention,” Minitti reports. “Mastcam will acquire large mosaics of the floor of the notch that we just drove over to capture bedrock textures and structures, and the butte to the rear left of the rover to gain yet another perspective on its internal structure and evaluate its relationship to the rock above it.”

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3329, December 17, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Imaging act

Early in the morning of Sol 3329, when the sun was still shining on the cliff to the robot’s west, Mastcam was set to image the structures at the cliff base and acquire a multispectral analysis higher up the cliff where previous mosaics have indicated color variations. Lastly, Navcam will image the cliff in a small stereo mosaic at an early morning time to improve researcher’s three-dimensional picture of the structures in the cliff face.

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3329, December 17, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

ChemCam Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) was also slated to get in on the imaging act, but looking farther uphill at buttes that will be increasingly hard to see along the particular path we plan to take up Mount Sharp, Minitti says. “Both buttes are features we have imaged previously, but from farther away and from different angles. Today we will get a new perspective on them.”

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3329, December 17, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Dust load

Also on tap, Curiosity is to acquire atmospheric-focused measurements throughout the plan, with imaging to measure the dust load in the atmosphere at different times of sol, a Navcam cloud movie and dust devil survey, and measurement of argon in the atmosphere with APXS.

Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera image shot on Sol 3328, December 16, 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD and Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) are to run systematically over both sols. The Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument was to acquire nearly seven hours of passive data from the subsurface in addition to one 20 minute active observation right after the rover completes its drive of roughly 98-feet (30 meters) drive uphill.