We were very glad to come in to today’s planning to see the drive placed us in a perfect position to bring out the robotic arm to do some science! The rover will spend the first several hours of the sol 3688 plan taking ChemCam and Mastcam. ChemCam will use its laser on the target “Quixada” followed by ChemCam imaging of “Xiriana” and “Xidao.” Then Mastcam takes over with imaging the now-laser zapped Quixada, Xiriana, and the future robotic arm target “Tucuxuma.”
Once that long imaging block is done, we’ll take out the robotic arm to take a cool mosaic of the layered rocks in front of the rover at the target Tucuxuma, along with an APXS integration and some MAHLI imaging of another target “Tamandua.” We are also taking some inspection imaging of APXS.
Today was a tricky one for the arm Rover Planners, since all the bumpy and lumpy rocks you can see in the image above made it really hard to find a place to safely put the arm down without risking bumping our turret into the other rocks in the area. I was “RP2” today and I supported the arm Rover Planner in finding targets, evaluating safety of the robotic arm, and also doing the final verification and modeling of the commands.
After the arm activities, the rover will take a short nap before waking up to take a Navcam movie looking for dust devils and sending data back to Earth. The rover then takes another nap, waking up later in the evening for APXS integrations on the Tamandua target.
Later that night we’ll clean APXS and move the robotic arm into a safe overnight configuration in the air. After that, the rover will sleep for a few more hours before communicating more data back through our Mars orbiters. The plan also has our standard environmental monitoring activities with REMS, RAD, and DAN scattered throughout. The rover will sleep the rest of the night, preparing for another fun day of science tomorrow!
Related Links
Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory
Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com
Lunar Dreams and more
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The calm after the rock-toddler-tantrums: Sols 3684-3686
Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 20, 2022
Sometimes, I think Mars rocks are just a bunch of toddlers whom we have told to tidy their play room. And the more we want something, the more resistance we get. The latest episode of ‘This-rock-is-too-hard-to-drill, says the rock,’ reminded me of our drill attempt at Vera Rubin Ridge. In June 2018, we had drilled Duluth and also weathered the dust storm. We then tried to drill a specific type of rock with a hematite mineral signature observed from orbit. Looking back at July 2018, we can re-live that s … read more