By 
March 31st, 2020
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Left B image taken on Sol 2719, March 30, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2720 tasks.
“Curiosity’s drill campaigns are like poetry in fixed verse,” says Melissa Rice, a planetary geologist at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera image acquired on Sol 2719, March 30, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
A predefined set of activities has to occur in a sequence: first Curiosity must assess an outcrop for drilling, then drill and extract a sample, then process and characterize the sample, then deliver the sample to the robot’s Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction/X-Ray Fluorescence Instrument (CheMin) instrument for analysis, then prepare the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Instrument Suite, then deliver the sample to SAM for analysis, and finally dump the sample on the ground.
Curiosity Mast Camera Right photo taken on Sol 2717, March 28, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“All of this happens over a period of a couple weeks, and when we are planning the science observations for any given sol, we need to work within the scaffolding of the drill campaign sequence,” Rice notes. “But like poets crafting sonnets in iambic pentameter, we find freedom within the fixed structure to create something new.”
Curiosity Mast Camera Right photo taken on Sol 2717, March 28, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Second analysis of drill sample
Such was the case for a plan that covers sols 2717-2719.
“As Curiosity proceeds with the Edinburgh drill campaign, we use free blocks of time here and there to explore the landscape,” Rice reports. The main structure of this three-sol plan includes a second analysis of the Edinburgh drill sample with CheMin and the preconditioning of the SAM instrument to prepare for an upcoming Evolved Gas Analysis (EGA) observation.
Curiosity Mast Camera Right photo taken on Sol 2717, March 28, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Laser shots
As for the other Curiosity science observations, Rice points to:
Mastcam peers at the enigmatic outcrop with a panorama; ChemCam laser shoots three rocks: “Albany,” “Alloway,” and “Alexandria”; pediment surface revealed by the rover’s Remote Micro Imager (RMI); and Navcam movies seek to capture swirls of dust that sweep the horizon.
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 2719, March 30, 2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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