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Today's plan wrapped up our time at the Teal Ridge outcrop and we'll begin to drive toward the next waypoint in the clay-bearing unit of Gale Crater. We had several science tasks on our lien list to complete first, including ChemCam LIBS targets on the "rubbly" material in front of the outcrop (we identified a target named "Glencoe"), one on a dark vein structure within the outcrop (termed "Glenbuchat," some of the incredible layered structure in Teal Ridge can be seen in this MAHLI image), and then a Mastcam multispectral image (where Mastcam uses its different filters to get a better understanding of a rock's chemistry) of the "Beauly" target that received a thorough cleaning with the dust removal tool last week.
After the drive, we'll be about halfway to our next waypoint and we'll stop to conduct some post-drive science including imaging of the surrounding area and some late afternoon ENV activities including a Mastcam sky survey (to help understand the properties of the airborne dust) and a Navcam zenith movie to search for clouds. The "Aphelion Cloud Belt" season is nearly upon us and we expect the skies to be getting much cloudier in the sols and weeks ahead.
Written by Scott Guzewich, Atmospheric Scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center