Written by Conor Hayes, Graduate Pupil at York College
Earth planning date: Friday, Could 23, 2025
In Wednesday’s mission update, Alex talked about that this previous Monday’s plan included a “marathon” drive of 45 meters (148 toes). Right now, we discovered ourselves virtually 70 meters (230 toes) from the place we have been on Wednesday. This was our longest drive because the actually monumental 97-meter (318-foot) drive back on sol 3744.
Right now’s plan seems a bit totally different from our typical weekend plans. Due to the U.S. Memorial Day vacation on Monday, the group will subsequent assemble on Tuesday, so an additional sol needed to be appended to the weekend plan. This additional sol is usually getting used for our subsequent drive (about 42 meters or 138 toes), which signifies that all the science that we’ve deliberate immediately may be finished “focused,” i.e., we all know precisely the place the rover is. Consequently, we will use the devices on our arm to poke at particular targets near the rover, quite than filling our science time completely with distant sensing actions of farther-away options.
The rover’s energy wants are persevering with to dominate planning. Though we handed aphelion (the farthest distance Mars is from the Solar) a bit over a month in the past and so at the moment are getting nearer to the Solar, we’re nearly every week away from winter solstice within the southern hemisphere. That is the time of 12 months when Gale Crater receives the least quantity of sunshine from the Solar, resulting in notably chilly temperatures even throughout the day, and thus extra energy being wanted to maintain the rover and its devices heat. On the brilliant facet, being on the coldest time of the 12 months signifies that we’ve solely hotter sols to stay up for!
Given the necessity to hold strictly to our allotted energy finances, everybody did an exceptional job discovering optimizations to make sure that we may match as a lot science into this plan as potential. All collectively, we’ve over 4 hours of our typical focused and distant sensing actions, in addition to over 12 hours of in a single day APXS integrations.
Mastcam is spending a lot of its time immediately trying off within the distance, notably specializing in the potential boxwork structures that we’re driving in direction of. These constructions get two devoted mosaics, totaling 42 pictures between the 2 of them. Mastcam may also observe “Mishe Mokwa” (a small butte about 15 meters, or 49 toes, to our south) and a few bedrock troughs in our workspace, and can take two tau observations to characterize the quantity of mud within the ambiance.
ChemCam has only one solo imaging-only commentary on this plan: an RMI mosaic of Texoli butte off to our east. ChemCam shall be collaborating with APXS to take some passive spectral observations (i.e., no LIBS) to measure the composition of the ambiance. Mastcam and ChemCam may also be working collectively on observations of LIBS actions. This plan consists of an extravagant three LIBS, on “Orocopia Mountains,” “Dripping Springs,” and “Mountain Middle.” Each Mastcam and ChemCam even have a set of “darkish” observations meant to characterize the efficiency of the devices with no mild on their sensors, one thing that is crucial for correctly calibrating their measurements.
Our single set of arm actions consists of APXS, DRT, and MAHLI actions on “Camino Del Mar” and “Mount Baden-Powell,” each of that are bedrock targets in our workspace.
After all, I am unable to overlook to say the gathering of Navcam observations that we’ve on this plan to observe the surroundings. These embody a 360-degree survey in search of mud devils, two line-of-sight actions to measure the quantity of mud within the air inside Gale, and three cloud films. As all the time, we’ve additionally acquired a typical assortment of REMS, RAD, and DAN actions all through.