Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Curiosity Mars Hand Lens Imager photo produced on Sol 3771 March 16, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 3772 duties.

The Red Planet robot is leaving Tapo Caparo and is beginning something new, reports Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.

“But… actually, we are not going very far,” O’Connell-Cooper adds. “Whilst sitting at Tapo Caparo, we spent some time looking around at the neighborhood using Mastcam and [Chemistry and Camera] ChemCam imaging. Not too far away, we spotted a workspace that includes two types of bedrock – finely laminated bedrock (which is what we just drilled) and some bedrock with abundant nodules but apparently no laminations.”

Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Right B image captured on Sol 3771, March 16, 2023. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This may mark a transition from one unit to another, O’Connell-Cooper notes, so a new plan called for a rover drive over to that area in order to get this workspace into the upcoming weekend plan.

Float rock

The plan scripts a Touch and Go, doing the very last contact science on the research wish list and then moving on.

Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Left B image captured on Sol 3771, March 16, 2023. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) is to analyze a float rock (“Tucupita”) which was previously analyzed by ChemCam, who will use Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) to look at another float rock (“Uaimiti”) for comparison.

As the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) team acquired images of Tucupita in last Monday’s plan to facilitate APXS placement, they were able to fit it in a MAHLI-only target, looking at another float stone (“Tamanaco”) which is slightly closer to the rover.

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3771, March 16, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Imaging the buttes

“As we have been here for several sols, we have already imaged the buttes around us with Mastcam and the ChemCam’s long distance imager [Remote Micro-Imager] (RMI), but once we leave, obviously the view will change,” O’Connell-Cooper notes. “So, before we leave, we will get one final set of images from this viewpoint of the “Chenapau” butte (Mastcam) and a large channel feature further afield (RMI).”

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3771, March 16, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

As always, the environmental theme group continues their monitoring of environmental conditions in Gale. Navcam will complete a dust devil (wind vortice) survey, and Mastcam will look at dust in the atmosphere (tau measurement).

Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3771, March 16, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Back on the road

“It will be good to be back on the road, even if we are just heading further along the Marker Band,” O’Connell-Cooper reports.

The Marker Band (including this drill site) has been the site of lots of exciting science, some of which was presented this week at a special session at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas, marking Curiosity’s ten years of active roving in Gale. O’Connell-Cooper

“However, there is so much amazing data and images to work on from the Marker Band,” O’Connell-Cooper concludes, “we will be talking about for many years to come!”