Written by Deborah Padgett, OPGS Process Lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Earth planning date: Friday, June 20, 2025
In the course of the plan masking Sols 4575-4576, Curiosity continued our investigation of mysterious boxwork buildings on the shoulders of Mount Sharp. After a profitable 56-meter drive (about 184 toes), Curiosity is now parked in a trough slicing via a extremely fractured area lined by linear options regarded as proof of groundwater circulate within the distant previous of Mars. With all six wheels firmly planted on strong floor, our rover is prepared for contact science! Sadly, a repeat of the frost-detection experiment anticipated for the weekend plan is postponed for just a few days because of a well-understood ChemCam problem. Within the meantime, our atmospheric investigations have an opportunity to shine, as they obtained further time to look at the Martian sky.
Within the early afternoon of Sol 4577, Curiosity’s navigation cameras will take a film of the higher reaches of Aeolis Mons (Mount Sharp), hoping to see shifting cloud shadows. This statement permits the crew to calculate the altitude of clouds drifting over the height. Subsequent, Navcam will level straight up, to picture cloud movement on the zenith and decide wind route at their altitude. Mastcam will then do a collection of small mosaics to check the rover workspace and options of the trough that Curiosity has entered. First is a 6×4 stereo mosaic of the workspace and the contact science targets “Copacabana” and “Copiapo.” The primary goal is a consultant pattern of the trough bedrock, and its title celebrates a city in Bolivia situated on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The second goal is a bit of lighter-toned materials, which can be related to stripes or “veins” filling the numerous crosscutting fractures within the native stones. These are the deposits doubtlessly left by groundwater intrusion way back. The title “Copiapo” honors a silver mining metropolis within the extraordinarily dry Atacama desert of northern Chile. A second 6×3 Mastcam stereo mosaic will have a look at lively cracks within the trough. Two further 5×1 Mastcam stereo mosaics goal “Ardamarca,” a ridge parallel to the trough partitions, and a cliff exposing layers of rock on the base of “Mishe Mokwa” butte. At our present location, all of the Curiosity goal names are taken from the Uyuni geologic quadrangle named after the otherworldly lake mattress and ephemeral lake excessive on the Bolivian altiplano, however the Mishe Mokwa butte is again within the Altadena quad, named for a preferred mountain climbing path within the Santa Monica Mountains. After this prolonged science block, Curiosity will deploy its arm, brush the mud from Copacabana with the DRT, then picture each it and Copiapo with the MAHLI microscopic imager. In a single day, APXS will decide the composition of those two targets.
Early within the morning of Sol 4578, Mastcam will take massive 27×5 and 18×3 stereo mosaics of various elements of the trough, utilizing morning mild to spotlight the terrain shadows. Later within the day, Navcam will do a 360 sky survey, figuring out section operate throughout your entire sky. A 25-meter drive (about 82 toes) will observe, and the post-drive imaging consists of each a 360-degree Navcam panorama of our new location and a picture of the bottom below the rover with MARDI within the night twilight. The subsequent sol is all atmospheric science, with an in depth set of afternoon suprahorizon films and a dust-devil survey for Navcam, in addition to a Mastcam mud opacity statement. The ultimate set of observations on this plan occurs on the morning of Sol 4580 with extra Navcam suprahorizon and zenith films to look at clouds, a Navcam mud opacity measurement throughout Gale Crater, and a final Mastcam tau. On Monday, we count on to plan one other drive and hope to return to the frost-detection experiment quickly as we discover the boxwork canyons of Mars.