By 
February 3rd, 2024
Curiosity’s location as of Sol 4083, with distance driven at that time: 19.47 miles/31.33 kilometers.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 4086 duties.
Reports Sharon Wilson Purdy, a planetary geologist at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., Curiosity continues its investigation of the light and dark banded sulfate terrain and started a two-sol (Sols 4084-4085) planning day with several beautiful rocks within the reach of the rover’s robotic arm.
“The rover is tantalizingly close to the base of the upper Gediz Vallis ridge and the team is very excited for the spectacular geology ahead,” Purdy adds.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera photo acquired on Sol 4085, February 2, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Flakey dark material
Mars researchers kicked off planning for sol 4084 by analyzing a finely layered rock named “Grizzly Lakes” with the dust removal tool (DRT), the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) imaging.
Purdy explains that just beyond “Grizzly Lakes,” the robot’s Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) and its Mastcam teamed up to characterize a crescent-shaped rock, “Gorge of Despair,” to investigate flakey dark material standing in relief on the surface of the rock.
The Mastcam team created a mosaic of the workspace in addition to three mosaics that characterized the local bedrock and sand at “Roads End,” “Knapsack Pass,” and “Rae Lake.”
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 4085, February 2, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Small impact crater
Mastcam also took a mosaic of “Round Lake” to image what is likely a small impact crater, Purdy notes.
“We pushed the plan to the limit by including two long distance ChemCam Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) images of a dark band in the distance, and an outcrop along the upper Gediz Vallis Ridge to characterize the variety of rocks,” Purdy reports.
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 4085, February 2, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Lastly, Mars team members included a Navcam mosaic of the view behind the rover, Purdy adds, to document several of the layers and buttes in Chenapau, Orinoco, and Kukenan that Curiosity drove by in recent months. “And then we hit the road!”
Mouth-watering vantage point
On the schedule is a planned drive of 33 feet (10-meters) that will put Curiosity on a “topographic bench,” Purdy explains, “that should provide a mouth-watering vantage point to document a section of the upper Gediz Vallis ridge that is informally named ‘Fascination Turret.’ We hope to evaluate the processes that deposited the sediment in this ridge to understand how it formed and how it was later eroded to its present-day form.”
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 4085, February 2, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
On the plan for Sol 4085, Mars researchers scheduled a ChemCam AEGIS activity.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 4084, February 1, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Purdy explains that AEGIS is an acronym for Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science and is a mode where the rover identifies and selects a geological target from navigation camera images based on a set of guidelines set by scientists back here on Earth.
“Several environmental observations are included in the plan to monitor dust devil activity as well as zenith, suprahorizon, and Tau observations that will measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere,” Purdy concludes.
Curiosity Mast Camera (Mastcam) image produced on Sol 4084, February 2, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Curiosity Mast Camera (Mastcam) image produced on Sol 4084, February 2, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
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