Curiosity is currently located within “Maria Gordon notch,” which is a rather tight canyon surrounded by high rock walls located at the transition onto the Greenheugh Pediment. Her views are currently magnificent – steep walls surround Curiosity and cast some rather dramatic shadows onto the workspace.
However, despite the beautiful views, today was a sobering lesson in the complexities of planning and executing martian surface science investigations. On some days, planning the scientific activities for the Curiosity rover to perform on Mars seems easy – observe cool features, plan cool observations, and let Curiosity execute the plan as proposed.
Today, unfortunately, was not one of those days. A series of events (including a drive that was cut short on the previous day and a delay in getting all of our data processed, mosaicked, and ready for scientists to use) prevented our original plan from being submitted and executed. First, because Curiosity’s drive ended early yesterday, we did not have the full imaging data available to us to ensure that we could use the rover arm and APXS instrument safely.
Therefore, we scrubbed our original plan to perform an APXS observation of “typical” bedrock in front of the rover in exchange for using the MAHLI instrument to image the rover wheels and to determine whether Curiosity is in a stable position to use the arm in the next planning cycle.
Next, we modified our original plan to target local bedrock with a ChemCam LIBS observation in exchange for a ChemCam AEGIS activity, which is designed to automatically identify targets of interest in the landscape and autonomously target them with ChemCam’s laser instrument. Lastly, the team planned a handful of Mastcam imaging mosaics with the limited pointing and localization information available to the team.
Even though today came with a lot of complexity and a lot of “back-and-forth” between the science team and the rover planners, the uplink team managed to develop and uplink a really strong plan to characterize our current workspace with Mastcam and ChemCam observations. Even though we’re still doing great science today, here’s to hoping that the next few planning cycles are smoother and more straightforward than today’s planning cycle!
Sols 3321-3322: Old Martian in the Mountain
by Scott Guzewich | Atmospheric Scientist GSFC
Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 10 – After a challenging day yesterday due to issues on Mars and Earth, today went far smoother as we planned 2 sols that will continue our activities in the visually stunning Maria Gordon notch.
On the first sol we will have ChemCam activities with a LIBS target on a nearby bedrock slab and then a passive observation to study atmospheric dust, ice, and gases. Then we’ll place the arm on “Cladh Hallan” for contact science with APXS and MAHLI.
On the second sol, Curiosity will wake up early to catch the morning sunlight on the west face of the cliff wall lining the notch and image it with Mastcam and Navcam. Then after additional science with Navcam, Mastcam, and ChemCam, the rover will drive just to the right of the corner of the cliff seen in the image above.
From our current location, it can’t help but remind me of the Old Man in the Mountain that used to be in New Hampshire. At this parking location, we’ll conduct a focused science campaign with DAN over the weekend to study the makeup of the cliff wall itself.
Related Links
Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory
Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com
Lunar Dreams and more
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Sol 3319: Shoot the Gap
Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 08, 2021
Curiosity is preparing to “shoot the gap”and dash through the Maria Gordon notch (the cliff-lined valley seen in the image above) in the sols ahead. Already we have a spectacular view of the 12 m (39 feet) tall cliff on the right/west side of the Notch and today’s plan included additional imaging of the cliff face.
DAN is planning a mini-campaign to study the composition of the cliff face and we began preparing for that today with two DAN “active”sequences (when DAN generates neutrons to bombard t … read more