Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Curiosity’s location as of Sol 3972. Distance driven to date 19.3 miles/31.06 kilometers.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater has just started Sol 3973 duties.

“Winter is almost half over in Gale, but this rover doesn’t hibernate,” reports Natalie Moore, mission operations specialist at Malin Space Science Systems, based in San Diego, California.

The last time the rover stopped for more than a few sols was at the Ubajara drill site back in early May, almost a kilometer and 150 sols ago.

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera photo acquired on Sol 3972, October 9, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“Now, five months later, we’re approaching our next drill site in this area of alternating banded layers dispersed across lithified sand,” Moore added. “The scientist jury is still out on which block is their favorite, but the operations team is already preparing to begin a two-to-three week drill campaign in the near future. With solar conjunction fast approaching, it’ll be interesting to see how much of a drill campaign we can fit between now and November 11th.”

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera photo acquired on Sol 3972, October 9, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Two-sol plan

For the recently scripted two-sol (Sols 3968-3969) unrestricted plan, Moore said there’s a remote science block containing two Navcam activities to measure the atmospheric opacity and search for dust devils, noting “we’ve seen some large ones recently!”

Mastcam will follow up with a mono, Mastcam Right-only mosaic of the upper Gediz Vallis ridge that Curiosity has been driving parallel to since a crater cluster campaign.

The robot’s Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) is to finish off the block with a 5×1 Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) raster on a nodular bedrock target named “Black Giant,” with Mastcam Right scheduled to document the effort afterwards.

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera photo acquired on Sol 3972, October 9, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Filter wheel stalled

On sol 3953 (September 20th, 2023) the Mastcam-34mm (Mastcam Left) filter wheel stalled between filters L0 (clear) and L1 (green) while running a multispectral atmospheric opacity (tau) imaging sequence, explains Moore.

“Since then, the Mastcam team has been sending a series of diagnostic commands with varying motor drive parameters, in an effort to characterize the problem and get the filter wheel back to the L0 position where it is most often used,” Moore said. “To date, some progress has been made, and the team is hopeful that the L0 position will be reached soon.”

Analysis will then continue to determine if the filter wheel can be safely returned to normal service. “Remember, this rover has been outside Earth’s protection since late 2011! This isn’t the first time our engineering team fixed something remotely and it won’t be the last,” Moore reported.

Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Left B image taken on Sol 3971, October 8, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Evening integration

After another Mastcam Left diagnostic activity was set to complete, the first arm backbone was slated to kick off and includes two contact science targets: “Helen Lake” (a less dusty dark-toned layer) and “Marion Peak” (a slightly dustier dark-toned layer).

The rover’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) was scheduled to take a full-suite of images on Helen Lake from 25, 5, and 2centimeters away and another mini-suite of images on Marion Peak from 25 centimeters and 5 centimeters away.

After the imaging, the robot’s arm turret was to spin to the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) frame for their evening integrations on the two targets.

Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 3972, October 9, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Nap the night away

The first orbiter to pass over Curiosity will be the [European Space Agency] Trace Gas Orbiter, which should send data packages back to Earth.

“We mostly nap the night away, and on the second sol we’ll wake up with another remote sensing block starting again with a Navcam dust devil movie. Mastcam will follow up this time with some near-field mosaics of sand troughs between blocks, and ChemCam will shoot their second LIBS target named “Bridgeport” on a smoother piece of bedrock,” Moore explained.

With Curiosity’s arm activities done, rover operators will be ready to drive and potentially end up near the rover’s next drill site.