Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 3924, August 21, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 3925 duties.

“The Gediz Vallis Ridge has been a long-term, and, at times, seemingly impossible goal of the Curiosity Rover mission,” reports Deborah Padgett, Operational Product Generation Subsystem (OPGS) Task Lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“Our path to it has repeatedly been diverted from our first difficult climb onto the Greenhugh Pediment way back in 2020, our dead-end foray onto and across the pediment through a steep side ravine of the Gediz Vallis, ultimately blocked by the potentially wheel-eating “Gatorback” ridges in 2022, and finally to our recent slip-and-slide circuitous climb out of the Marker Band Valley onto the Gedis Vallis ridge itself,” Padgett points out.

Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Right B photo taken on Sol 3924, August 20, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Recently, team members called that Gediz Vallis (GV) ridge the “Bermuda Triangle” of Mt. Sharp.

Uncertain footing

“We are now just a few meters away from being able to reach the arm out and get contact science on some of the ridge material, and anticipation is growing,” Padgett adds.

A recent drive of Curiosity on Sol 3921 ended a few meters short of the intended destination — a cluster of boulders — due to some sideways sliding by the robot en-route.

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 3924, August 21, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“The uncertain footing also left our wheels unsafe to support a deployment of Curiosity’s arm,” Padgett reports, “so all of our weekend science activities will be via targeted remote sensing rather than use of the arm’s instruments for more detailed study.”

Sulfate-bearing bedrock

Padgett says that Curiosity’s Mastcam plan involved performing a 360 degree panorama, which should be spectacular!

Mastcam will also have large mosaics targeted at the transition between the dark “float” rock ridge material and the underlying sulfate-bearing bedrock, as well as multispectral imaging of the nearby “Skiathos” and “Skopelos” boulders.

ChemCam will zap those same rocks with its laser to study a possible surface coating and compositional variations between rock layers.

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 3924, August 21, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Robot bump

ChemCam will also use the telescopic mode of its Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) camera to zoom in on a light colored bedrock wall adjacent to a basin of dark sand and to continue its characterization of the amazing layering on Kukenan Butte. “Meanwhile, Navcam will take some dust devil movies and a measurement of dust in the air across Gale Crater, as well as imaging of clouds and their shadows on the beautiful peaks around us,” Padgett notes.

Another short drive of 6.5 feet (2 meters) was slated, which the team calls a “bump,” and should place Curiosity within arm’s reach of the boulder collection on Sol 3924.

Following the usual set of post-drive observations, Curiosity will perform AEGIS (Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science) – a software suite that permits the rover to autonomously detect and prioritize targets.

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 3924, August 21, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

AEGIS and Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) imaging on Sol 3925 is to further document the geology of the robot’s new location. Also planned in the early morning of Sol 3926 was a set of atmospheric observations, including a dust measurement and a Navcam 360 phase function sky survey.

Decisional downlink

“With Monday’s plan, Curiosity will hopefully be able to finally perform contact science on a diverse cluster of GV Ridge boulders, presuming that our drive is successful and doesn’t leave our wheels perched on any of the abundant rocks on this steep slope,” says Padgett.

Another remaining challenge is a very tiny decisional downlink on Monday, “giving us very little data to decide on our next steps. In addition, on Monday, JPL is in the bull’s-eye of the very first tropical storm watch to ever be posted in Southern California by the National Hurricane Center, Padgett concludes. “Fingers crossed that the ‘GV Ridge Triangle’ will not claim another MSL [Mars Science Laboratory] plan before Curiosity reaches the top!”

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3924, August 20, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech