We are still looking forward to data from sol 724’s mini-drill experiment, and since we don’t havethat yet, we can’t do the full drill in the sol 725 plan.
We are still looking forward to data from sol 724’s mini-drill experiment, and since we don’t have
that yet, we can’t do the full drill in the sol 725 plan. So instead, we are doing a remote sensing day
on sol 725, which means lots of Mastcam and ChemCam. ChemCam will be zapping four targets:
the tailings from the mini-drill on "Bonanza King", plus targets "Carrara," "Perdido," and "Lee Flat".
Mastcam will be taking documentation images of those targets, plus a mosaic of the target "Lone Pine"
and a photometry experiment to measure how sunlight reflects from the martian soil at different
illumination angles. There are also some Mastcam images of the sun to measure the amount of dust in
the atmosphere, and Navcam will be looking for clouds over Mount Sharp. Meanwhile, CheMin will be
getting ready to ingest some of the drilled rock powder by rotating an empty analysis cell into position.
While we wait for pictures of our mini-drill results, I highly recommend that you take a look at this post
on Curiosity’s wheel damage by Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society. I found it useful even as a
MSL team member because it distills a lot of information into one place.
Dates of planned rover activities described in these reports are subject to change due to a variety of factors related to the Martian environment, communication relays and rover status.
Written by Ryan Anderson, Planetary Geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center
