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Sols 899-902: Long weekend, long plan!

Today we planned 4 sols to take the rover through President’s
day weekend. We humans get a long weekend, but the rover has a lot of work to
do! We were supposed to drive about 45 meters in the previous plan, but the
data received this morning showed that the rover stopped after only 17 meters.
I was on duty as the ChemCam science Payload Uplink Lead (sPUL) today, and in
the science theme group meeting we were worried that the short drive would
cause a major change in the plan, but it turned out not to be a problem. The
rover drivers understand why the rover stopped early and had no concerns about
simply continuing the drive in today’s plan. Even better, there was enough room
in the plan to do the drive without changing how much time we had to do science!

The location where the rover stopped was mostly flat bedrock
and large sand ripples: not where we planned to stop, but still plenty of
science to do. On sol 899, ChemCam will analyze the target "Osiris" and on Sol
900 ChemCam will analyze "Garley." Both of these targets are patches of
bedrock, so the chemistry data, when combined with the many other observations
of bedrock over the last few weeks and months, will help understand how the
rocks change throughout the stratigraphic section.

Mastcam has an 8x3 mosaic of Osiris on Sol 899, which seems
to have some fine layering that is barely visible in Navcam. On sol 900 Mastcam
also will take a documentation image of Garley, a 2x2 mosaic of a layered rock
near the rover called "Sneakover" (because it was snuck into the plan at the
last minute), and a 2x2 mosaic of "Hermosa," where the rover tracks cross a
sand ripple.

On sol 901, ChemCam will make some passive (no laser)
measurements of the sky, and then Curiosity will resume the drive that was cut
short. After the drive, we have standard imaging to get our bearings, plus a
Mastcam 360 degree mosaic and a Navcam cloud observation. The DAN instrument
will do an active measurement after the drive to characterize the amount of
light elements (such as the hydrogen in water) under the rover in the new
location. And finally, ChemCam will do some routine measurements of the
calibration targets.

On sol 902, the rover gets a bit of a rest, with just
routine environmental measurements by RAD and REMS. by Ryan Anderson --Ryan is a planetary scientist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center and a member of the ChemCam team on MSL. 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