After yesterday’s check-out, Curiosity is GO to attempt to make our 37th drill hole on Mars. The prior plan’s DRT cleaned up our target Amapari beautifully – it is in the middle of the clean area in the attached MAHLI image. Today is just a one-sol plan, but it is a full one!
Before drilling, we have a short amount of time for imaging. Drilling take a lot of time and power, so we had to limit what else we could fit in today. The rover will be examining a representative bedrock target named “Coimin” with Mastcam and ChemCam LIBS.
Mastcam is also taking a large 16×9 stereo mosaic to the southeast of an area named “Amapa,” while ChemCam is taking a 12×1 long-distance RMI mosaic to the north to cover the inverted channel.
Since drilling requires a lot of energy, Curiosity will take a nap before proceeding. As one of the Rover Planners today, I helped to sequence the arm activities. Drill days are always challenging because when we redesigned drilling to keep the drill bit extended, we had to build in a lot of extra sequencing to make it work and do it safely.
This means it takes our tools a long time to simulate it and can make the planning day a little longer. Today, we begin with locating and imaging a target we will need later when we clean the sample out of the drill.
We select this target to be out of the main part of the workspace so we won’t dump drill tailings on top of anything interesting. We then place the drill on Amapari and start drilling. We are aiming for a depth of 35mm in order to get enough sample for all of the CheMin and SAM experiments we want to do here.
This can take up to three hours, depending on how hard the rock is, and we can never really know until we try to drill. Other recent drill targets have been relatively soft, and hopefully Amapari will be in family. After we complete drilling, we will take Navcam and Mastcam stereo images of the (hopefully) new drill hole and then park the arm in a configuration that is safe for overnight.
Before falling asleep for the night, we will also take a DAN active observation.
Related Links
Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory
Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com
Lunar Dreams and more
|
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook – our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don’t have a paywall – with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution. |
||
|
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal |
 |
SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only |
Analyzing the rhythmically layered bedrock above the marker band: Sols 3669-3670
Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 02, 2022
Curiosity drove ~25 meters back toward the Marker Band from our detour to the Gediz Vallis Ridge and has returned to the rhythmically layered bedrock we observed on Sols 3648-3649.
The first time Curiosity encountered these rocks we were unable to analyze them because one of the rover’s wheels was perched on a rock. Now that we are parked safely, we will use a “Touch and Go” approach where Curiosity will have a busy morning collecting images and data before driving ~15 meters to our next location. … read more