Written by Ashley Stroupe, Mission Operations Engineer and Rover Planner at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Earth planning date: Friday, Aug. 1, 2025.
Now that we now have reached August, our “landiversary” (anniversary of touchdown — Aug. 5 PDT) is lower than per week away! The workforce is trying ahead to with the ability to rejoice the milestone of our rover changing into a young person at 13. In the present day’s picture is an exquisite back-lit late afternoon picture of the close by mountains and the distant crater rim. These views make engaged on Mars by no means get outdated!
The primary sol of as we speak’s plan may be very busy as a result of we are going to solely have knowledge from the primary sol down in time for planning on Monday. In the present day I used to be working as a Rover Planner, supporting each arm and drive actions. We begin very first thing with arm actions; we DRT brush and do APXS integration on the goal “San Cristóbal,” which is a bedrock goal, and the one place within the workspace clean and flat sufficient for us to brush.
After a short nap, we now have an in depth imaging marketing campaign. We take Mastcam photographs of the AEGIS goal from the earlier plan and two potential vein targets “Rio Satja” and “Río Ichilo.” We then take Mastcam stereo mosaics of boxwork targets “Pontezuelo” and “Catedrales de Tara.” Moreover we now have stereo mosaics of “Llanos de Challe,” a transition between the bedrock within the boxwork hole and the boxwork ridge, a close-by light-toned publicity, and a few extra troughs and ridges. ChemCam then takes a LIBS remark of “Airport Domes,” which is one other hole within the boxworks. Lastly, we take a ChemCam RMI and a Mastcam of Pontezuelo.
After ending all of the imaging, we proceed with the remainder of the arm actions. We cut up the arm actions to accommodate conflicting constraints — each APXS and ChemCam each must be as early as attainable. On this set of arm actions, we start with MAHLI imaging of the 2 targets, San Cristóbal and “Salar de Agua Amara,” which consists of delicate branching constructions doubtless made by groundwater.
After one other brief nap, we do a small adjustment in our place to get one other fascinating piece of bedrock ridge in our workspace. To be able to strategy it at angle, we first drive parallel to the ridge to be lined up with the goal, after which we flip and drive straight to it. As a consequence of constraints on how we wish to park at targets, typically these shorter drives will be extra sophisticated than longer ones — however as we speak it was less complicated. After finishing the drive, we unstow the arm to get a transparent view of our workspace for Monday’s planning in addition to our normal post-drive imaging after which Curiosity goes to sleep for the evening.
The second sol of the plan is a little more leisurely. Round noon, Curiosity shall be taking some atmospheric observations, together with a Navcam dust-devil survey and a south-facing suprahorizon film, adopted by an AEGIS exercise the place the rover will get to choose targets and observe them herself. Then, early the subsequent morning, Curiosity will get up to take some extra atmospheric observations, together with Navcam zenith and suprahorizon films, Navcam line-of-sight towards the crater rim, and a Mastcam photo voltaic tau to measure mud within the environment. Lastly, she’ll get a brief nap earlier than waking as much as begin the subsequent plan.