Written by Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA’s Goddard House Flight Heart
Earth planning date: Friday, July 25, 2025
A 23-meter drive (about 75 ft) introduced Curiosity to immediately’s deliberate “look-about” spot. The spotlight of the plan would be the 360-degree Mastcam panorama that may doc the ridge-and-hollow topography of the boxwork-forming unit we have been exploring, along with overlying stratigraphy in among the close by buttes. The appropriate-angle ridge sample is kind of distinguished within the HiRISE orbital imaging, which enabled us to plan for this cease. It has been 70 sols since the last panorama and the rover has pushed fairly a ways in that point!
Extra detailed imaging was deliberate with the ChemCam distant imager (RMI) and Mastcam high-resolution M100: mosaics will cowl the uncovered strata beneath the ridge we’re planning to drive on (“Arequipa Airport”), two linear fractures, one parallel to the massive ridge and one cross-cutting it (“Laguna de Salinas” and “Laguna Santa Rosa”), some troughs round a close-by light-toned float block (“Arubai”), and the Uyuni butte within the center distance.
The bedrock texture right here was a noticeable change from the earlier workspace, with a knobbly oriented texture interspersed sometimes with platier exposures. Geochemical measurements had been deliberate with the ChemCam LIBS to enrich the auto-targeted post-drive AEGIS measurement: “La Coca” on a block that appeared to point out uncommon colours, and “El Algodón” on a knobbly textured chunk of bedrock. APXS geochemistry was deliberate with mud elimination on the “Yura Tuff” knobbly goal and with out mud elimination on the “Tipnis” goal. MAHLI may even present close-up imaging on the 2 APXS targets.
For the trendy Martian setting, it is nonetheless the cloudy season at Gale so we’re planning a number of cloud-related actions. The Mastcam sky survey will measure abundances of atmospheric mud and water ice, whereas a particular cloud altitude statement will embrace video of clouds and their shadows in order that the altitudes and velocities of the clouds and associated winds might be calculated. A separate quick film will seek for mud lifting (mud satan) exercise. Lastly, the standard passive REMS and DAN observations will monitor the temperature, humidity, and neutron setting at Curiosity’s present location.