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Sol 4553: Again to the Boxwork!

A grayscale photograph of Martian terrain in front of the Curiosity rover shows very bumpy, uneven ground with large, polygonal sections of rock on the surface separated by gouges in the soil. The bumpy area and a smoother patch just beyond that all appear shiny. The bottom of the frame shows parts of the rover, running from the middle left edge to the lower right corner of the image, including part of its robotic arm which carries a nameplate imprinted with “Curiosity” outlined in white, all-capital letters, and to the right of that a line drawing of the rover.

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this picture of its workspace within the “boxwork” terrain space, displaying resistant, ridge-like options the place it’ll examine the targets dubbed “Sisquoc River” and “Palo Verde Mountains.” Curiosity acquired the picture utilizing its Left Navigation Digicam on Might 27, 2025 — Sol 4552, or Martian day 4,552 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 08:38:12 UTC.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Written by Lucy Thompson, Planetary Geologist at College of New Brunswick

Earth planning date: Tuesday, Might 27, 2005

We return to planning right now after a profitable lengthy weekend and about 42 meters of drive distance (about 138 ft). We deliberate 4 sols of actions on Friday to maintain Curiosity busy, whereas the U.S.-based science group and engineers took day off yesterday for the Memorial Day vacation. As we received to admire the brand new workspace and drive path view in entrance of the rover this morning, I noticed that now we have now pushed about 35 kilometers (about 22 miles) and climbed greater than 850 meters (2,789 ft) in elevation since touchdown almost 13 years in the past, and we proceed to do thrilling science on Mars, having just lately pushed onto new terrain.

The so-called boxwork constructions are a collection of resistant ridges noticed each from orbit and in long-distance rover imaging (see Ashley’s blog here). Not solely are the ridges of curiosity (do they point out enhanced fluid-flow and cementation?), however the outcrop expression on the whole modified after we drove over a shallow trough onto the rocks that host the ridges.

This plan will proceed characterization of the fascinating boxwork terrain. We had an instance of a extra resistant, ridge-like function in our workspace right now (see accompanying picture). The composition of the ridge will probably be investigated utilizing ChemCam (goal “Sisquoc River”) and APXS (goal “Palo Verde Mountains”), with accompanying Mastcam and MAHLI pictures. We can even purchase Mastcam imaging of a trough-like function surrounding a bedrock slab, as a part of our ongoing documentation of such constructions, in addition to of an obvious resistant boxwork ridge within the distance (“Lake Cachuma”). And a primary for our mission, we’re planning the longest-distance ChemCam distant imaging mosaic that we’ll have acquired — 91 kilometers (virtually 57 miles) away! The intent is to match the long-distance view from the bottom with HiRISE orbital pictures in an try to create a 3D view. We additionally managed to squeeze in a Navcam giant dust-devil survey earlier than the deliberate 24-meter drive (about 79 ft). As soon as we arrive at our new location, MARDI will take a picture of the terrain beneath the rover.

The plan is rounded out with the usual REMS, DAN and RAD actions.