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February 11th, 2024
Image acquired by Curiosity’s Left Navigation Camera on Sol 4088, February 5, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 4049 duties.
Amelie Roberts, a graduate student at Imperial College London, reports that Curiosity had a recent and successful imaging-based stint providing geologists new looks of Gediz Vallis Ridge and surrounding buttes as the imagery is downlinked to Earth.
Curiosity also completed a drive of roughly 40 feet (13meters), “an achievement considering the terrain,” Roberts adds.
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Left B image acquired on Sol 4093, February 10, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
New workspace
The robot has approached its new workspace with a closer view of Gediz Vallis Ridge and a large wind-blown ridge “which is either a Transverse Aeolian Ridge (TAR), a wind-formed mound of sand smaller than a dune, or maybe a megaripple,” Roberts points out.
The targeted part of the plan the first sol (Sol 4089) was very sand-focused.
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 4093, February 10, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“While widespread on Mars, TARs and megaripples are much rarer on Earth,” Roberts reports, “so we seize any opportunity to study these features up-close and in situ.”
Sand target
Most of the “opportunistic science time” of the rover was planned to be spent imaging the sand target, named “Knapsack Pass”, with an extensive 32 frame Mastcam mosaic and a Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) passive raster to improve our understandings of its chemistry and formation, Roberts explains.
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 4093, February 10, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“We also continued our investigation of the layered sulfates,” Roberts adds.
The recent plan calls for contact science, using the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) and the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to target sulfate bedrock, “Willow Springs”, a ChemCam Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) to target flakey sulfate bedrock, “Triple Falls”, and planned Mastcam coverage of a small bowl-shaped depression in the sulfates, “Elinore Lake”.
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 4093, February 10, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Imaging campaign
“Even after all of these activities, there was still enough time to work towards our other science goal, the imaging campaign of Gediz Vallis ridge, through capturing part of the ridge with both ChemCam and Mastcam coverage,” Roberts says.
After a short drive, the untargeted part of the plan on the second sol (Sol 490) will be focused on some environmental science-theme group activities.
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 4093, February 10, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 4093, February 10, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“At the moment, on Mars, we’re in dust storm season so the environmental scientists are keeping their eyes out on all things dust, Roberts concludes. “This means that planning is focused on dust devil movies and surveys. We finished off the plan with one of ChemCam’s automated AEGIS (Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science) activities.”
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo taken on Sol 4093, February 10, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Posted in Space News
