MARS: CURIOSITY u krateru GALE Vol II.

sol 1693

sol 1696...

Sols 1698-1699: It's Touch and Go on the Climb to Vera Rubin Ridge

Written by Scott Guzewich on 05.16.2017



NASA's Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera (Navcams) on Sol 1696 Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The road to Vera Rubin Ridge, a feature believed to be enriched in the mineral hematite, is getting steeper, so we are stopping frequently to study the composition of the bedrock beneath our wheels. Our intention is to use the APXS and ChemCam instruments to analyze the bedrock for every 5 meters of vertical elevation gain to see how it may change as we climb toward Vera Rubin Ridge. And we are climbing fast on many of our drives now!

Today I was the Environmental Science Theme Group Lead as we planned Sols 1698 and 1699. Our first activity was a "Touch and Go", where we used APXS and MAHLI to study the bedrock (today at a location called "Woodland Ledge", in the lower right corner of the image) before driving ~50 meters southeastward to our next destination. We also targeted ChemCam and Mastcam to some nearby interesting rock targets named "Spurling Rock", "Grindstone Ledge", and "Knight Nubble".

Following the drive on Sol 1698, we will have a post-drive DAN active measurement and the 3rd set of Mastcam atmospheric observations on this sol. Having multiple measurements in a single sol helps us understand how amounts of atmospheric clouds and dust vary between morning, afternoon, and evening. On Sol 1699 we're planning untargeted science including a ChemCam AEGIS activity and a Navcam dust devil survey image sequence.

sol 1698-9  ...50 m naprijed

zalazak sunca....

Sol 1691: Stopped Short at Green Nubble

8 May 2017

The weekend drive stopped a little bit short of the target, but that’s ok because it put the rover in reach of some interesting cross-bedded rocks. We decided to do a “touch and go” plan for Sol 1691, quickly analyzing the rocks in front of us and then continuing on to the original drive destination.
The plan starts off with MAHLI observations of the targets “Ike’s Point” and “King’s Point”. ChemCam will then analyze the target “Green Nubble” and Mastcam will take a documentation image of the same target. Mastcam will also document the auto-targeted ChemCam observation from the weekend plan and take a few frames to connect the workspace and drive direction images. Finally, Mastcam has a small mosaic of “Androscoggin River”. After that, the rover will do a short drive followed by post-drive imaging, an auto-targeted ChemCam observation, and a MARDI image of the ground under our wheels.
In the morning of Sol 1692 Mastcam will make its first of three attempts at imaging Mars’ moon Phobos passing in front of the sun, which allows us to refine our understanding of its orbit. The Phobos transit observation will be followed by Mastcam and Navcam observations to measure dust in the atmosphere, as well as a couple of Navcam movies to look for clouds.
by Ryan Anderson
-Ryan is a planetary scientist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center and a member of the ChemCam team on MSL.

Vera Rubin Ridge na vidiku (Hematit Ridge) ...