By 
August 15th, 2025
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
On the NASA Curiosity rover team, scientists are continuing their exploration of the boxwork-forming region in Gale Crater, reports Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
“A successful 25-meter drive (about 82 feet) brought the rover from the “peace sign” ridge intersection to a new ridge site,” Lim adds. Several imaging investigations were recently pursued in, including Mastcam observations of a potential incipient hollow (“Laguna Miniques”), and of a number of troughs to examine how fractures transition from bedrock to regolith.
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity captured this image of the three intersecting ridges in front of the robot that make a sort of “peace sign” shape. Curiosity acquired the image using its Left Navigation Camera on August 8, 2025, Sol 4623.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Contact science
“With six wheels on the ground, Curiosity was also ready to deploy the rover arm for some contact science,” Lim explains.
The robot’s Alpha Proton X-ray Spectrometer (APXSAPXS and arm-mounted Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) measurements were planned to explore the local bedrock at two points with a brushed Dust Removal Tool (DRT) measurement (“Santa Catalina”) and a non-DRT measurement (“Puerto Teresa”).
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) photo produced on Sol 4628, August 13, 2025.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
A third MAHLI observation would be co-targeted with one of the Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) geochemical measurements on a light-toned block, “Palma Seca.”
Bedrock target
“Because we’re in nominal sols for this plan, we were able to plan a second targeted LIBS activity to measure the composition of a high-relief feature on another block, “Yavari” before the drive,” Lim reports.
Curiosity Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) RMI photo taken on Sol 4629, August 14, 2025.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
The auto-targeted LIBS Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science (AEGIS) — a software suite on Curiosity — that executed post-drive on sol 4626 had fallen on a bedrock target and will be documented in high resolution via Mastcam imaging.
Lim says that two long-distance imaging mosaics were planned for the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) remote imager (RMI): one on a potential scarp and lens in sediments exposed on the “Mishe Mokwa” butte in the strata above the rover’s current position, and the second on an east-facing boxwork ridge with apparently exposed cross-bedding that may be related to the previously explored “Volcán Peña Blanca” ridge.
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo acquired on Sol 4629, August 14, 2025.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Atmospheric opacity
“As usual, the modern Martian environment will also be observed with camera measurements of the atmospheric opacity,” Lim points out. On the books, a Navcam movie to watch for dust lifting, and the usual Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) and Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) passive monitoring of the temperature, humidity, and neutron flux at the rover’s location.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 4629, August 14, 2025.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“The next drive is planned to bring us to a spot in a hollow,” Lim concludes, “where we hope to plan contact science on the erosionally recessive hollow bedrock in addition to imaging with a good view of the rock layers exposed in the wall of another prominent ridge.”
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 4629, August 14, 2025.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Posted in Space News
