Written by Conor Hayes, Graduate Scholar at York College
Earth planning date: Wednesday, June 4, 2025
We’re persevering with to search for an appropriate location to gather a drilled pattern on this space. As it’s possible you’ll recall from Monday’s plan, we carried out a brief “bump” of slightly below 4 meters (about 13 ft) hoping to discover a drill goal at this time after Monday’s evaluation decided that there have been no good targets in our earlier workspace. Fortunately, at this time’s workspace was rather more cooperative, and we had been in a position to choose the goal “Altadena” as our subsequent potential drill location. Altadena is a reputation that we have been saving for a particular goal, as its namesake right here on Earth is a neighborhood subsequent to JPL that was devastated by the Eaton Hearth earlier this yr. We’re about to enter our next mapping quadrangle, which is able to include a brand new set of goal names, so the crew determined that utilizing Altadena because the identify for this drill website was an apparent selection.
The large exercise on this plan is the following step within the drilling course of. This exercise is the “preload check,” which determines if the forces on the drill shall be good whereas drilling, and the drill goal gained’t unexpectedly transfer or fracture. If we move the preload check and discover that the rock has the chemistry we’re on the lookout for, we’ll be capable of proceed with Altadena as our subsequent drill website. If we do not, we’ll need to determine whether or not to bump once more or resume driving deeper into this probably boxwork-bearing region.
In fact, the preload check is not the one factor we’re doing at this time. Coming in, it was wanting like our time for different actions could be fairly tight as a consequence of energy constraints imposed by preparations for drilling and conserving the rover heat throughout the chilly Martian winter. Nevertheless, we have lately carried out some new power-optimizing capabilities, which led to us having rather more energy at this time than we anticipated. This meant that we had been in a position so as to add an entire extra hour of science time along with the hour that we already had scheduled.
Unsurprisingly, Altadena will get a whole lot of love on this plan to characterize it earlier than we drill. This features a ChemCam LIBS exercise and a Mastcam commentary, in addition to some in a single day observations by APXS and a few MAHLI photos. As well as, Mastcam shall be observing some uncovered stratigraphy at “Dana Level,” a light-toned vein at “Mission Trails” that may also be a ChemCam LIBS goal, just a few extra close by troughs, and a few sandy patches at “Camp Williams” to look at wind-driven sediment transport. Together with the 2 LIBS, ChemCam shall be utilizing its RMI digicam so as to add to the pile of photos we’ve of the Mishe Mokwa butte and the yardang unit off within the distance.
Because the lead for the Environment and Setting (ENV) group at this time, it appeared like I used to be going to have a fairly mild workload as a result of energy constraints stopping any ENV actions apart from our typical REMS, RAD, and DAN observations. With the additional hour of science time, I used to be in a position so as to add a handful of latest actions, together with three Navcam cloud motion pictures, a Navcam line-of-sight commentary of mud inside Gale Crater, and a Navcam survey to search for any mud devils which may be swirling across the rover. A reasonably first rate ENV science haul for a plan that began with nothing!
Once we come into planning on Friday, we’ll hopefully have handed the preload check and can be capable of flip Altadena into our forty third drill gap within the coming sols, earlier than we proceed driving up the slopes of Mount Sharp.