Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Right B image taken on Sol 4197, May 27, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is carrying out an array of extraterrestrial tasks.

Conor Hayes, a graduate student at York University in Toronto, Canada, reported on the robot’s duties on Sols 4193-4194.

Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) photo produced on Sol 4197, May 27, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

A recent drive of Curiosity added up to nearly 100 feet (30 meters) as the rover continued to move towards the Gediz Vallis channel crossing. While it was executed perfectly, the “workspace” (the area in front of the rover that is reachable by the arm) “was not as exciting as we had anticipated, consisting mostly of sand and smaller rocks,” Hayes notes.

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 4197, May 27, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Straightforward transition

Consequently, it was decided to convert from a “contact science” plan where the rover’s robotic arm is unstowed for a lengthy list of activities before driving away on the second sol, to a “touch and go” plan.

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 4197, May 27, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Hayes adds that touch and go is where Mars researchers mostly focus on remote sensing and a more limited list of contact science activities (the “touch”) and drive away on the first sol (the “go”).

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 4197, May 27, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“From the environmental science side, these kinds of major plan reorganizations can be a bit stressful as they often involve lots of last-minute shuffling around of our pre-planned activities,” Hayes explains, “but the transition today was thankfully fairly straightforward.”

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 4197, May 27, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Good decision

The decision to convert the plan ended up being a good decision, Hayes continues, “as we parked with our left front wheel on top of a pile of small rocks, which limited the kinds of arm activities we could safely perform regardless of how interesting the workspace was.”

Moving the drive from the second to the first sol also means the rover team can relay more useful data down to Earth before plans were scripted for the long weekend that began last Friday.

“Despite the less interesting workspace (and setting aside the fact that calling any part of the surface of another planet ‘less interesting’ feels a little crazy), we’re still fitting a decent amount of science into this plan,” Hayes says.

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 4197, May 27, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Remote sensing

The plan called for first sol use of remote sensing, beginning with Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) on “Lake Catherine” and two ChemCam Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) mosaics, one on the Kukenán butte “that’s filled up our eastern view for many months now and another on “Echo Ridge,” a feature near the rover that we’re currently driving towards in the hopes of understanding its origin,” Hayes reports.

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 4197, May 27, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mastcam was to perform documentation of the LIBS target and take a couple of images of “Evelyn Lake” and “Emerson Lake,” two of the slightly larger rocks that lie just outside of the current workspace.

This remote sensing session was to wrap up with some environmental science, including a Mastcam tau to monitor the amount of dust in the atmosphere, a dust devil movie, and Navcam monitoring of the dust and sand on the rover deck.

Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 4197, May 27, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Deck monitoring

Before the rover’s drive, the plan scripted a brief unstowing of the robotic arm to acquire Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) observations of Lake Catherine.

Curiosity was to finish its first sol in this plan by driving away, followed by a standard suite of post-drive images to help us with Friday planning, including another Navcam deck monitoring mosaic to see if the drive moved around any of the sand and dust.

Look for dust devils

“Because we’ll be in a new location, the second sol of this plan [Sol 4194] is all untargeted remote sensing. ChemCam was to use AEGIS (Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science) – a software suite that permits the rover to autonomously detect and prioritize targets.

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 4197, May 27, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

AEGIS was to autonomously search for a LIBS target in the rover’s new location, “then we’ll take a series of short Navcam movies to look for dust devils around the rover and a Navcam 3×1 line-of-sight mosaic to determine the amount of dust currently in the atmosphere within Gale,” Hayes points out.

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 4197, May 27, 2024.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

High solar activity

Shortly after noon, Curiosity was slated to call it a day (or sol, really), Hayes continued, “and head back to sleep for the rest of this plan, occasionally waking up to phone home with the data it has gathered.”

As always, the Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN), the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD), and the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) “remain hard at work in the background, RAD particularly so given the high solar activity that has been seen recently,” Hayes concluded.

One Response to “Curiosity Mars Rover: Touch, Go, Contact Science”