Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager Sol 3420 photo produced on March 21, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 3421 duties.

Reports Mark Salvatore, a planetary geologist at the University of Michigan, after the robot made a drive of roughly 50 feet (15 meters) drive to the west along the top of the Greenheugh Pediment, Curiosity is now positioned at an interesting textural transition within the pediment’s surface units.

“Quite a large amount of the pediment is dominated by a washboard-like pattern at the surface that can be easily observed from orbit, while the region Curiosity ascended onto the pediment surface is rugged yet lacks those clear washboard-like features,” Salvatore said. “With this latest drive, Curiosity is now positioned at the transition between these two surface units, and the team is continuing to assess the traversability of this units.”

Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo acquired on Sol 3420, March 21, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Washboarding

Given the robot’s new vantage point, the plan is for Curiosity to spend time characterizing the different morphological features observed on top of the pediment.

The last weekend plan was scripted to start with several Mastcam imaging sequences designed to characterize the washboarding that is observed in the landscape ahead of the rover.

The terrain’s small-scale roughness and oriented ventifacted rocks led the science team to informally refer to these textures as “gator-back terrain.”

Curiosity was also slated to perform two Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) analyses on two different targets – a smooth outcrop target named “Macmerry” and a rougher knobby target named “Ochiltree.”

Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera photo acquired on Sol 3420, March 21, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Planned drive

After a ChemCam passive sky observation around midday on sol 3419, Curiosity was set to unstow its robotic arm to conduct a Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) integration on the outcrop target named “Blackadder” and an overnight APXS measurement to characterize the martian atmosphere.

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3420, March 21, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Salvatore lastly reports, on Sol 3420, Curiosity was scheduled to complete Mastcam and ChemCam observations (including a long-distance remote imaging mosaic) before embarking on a planned drive of approximately 115 feet (35 meters) drive to the west to continue the investigation of the pediment and the interesting surface.