Sols 3398-3400: The Road Ahead

The drive on Sol 3397 went well and gave us some good perspective on the road ahead, as seen in the above Navcam image. Curiosity is perched at the edge of the pediment, carefully planning our route to climb fully on top of the pediment capping unit, and the team is eager to investigate these rocks!

Today’s 3-sol plan was a typical weekend plan, with opportunities for contact science, remote sensing, and a drive. Although our workspace mostly consisted of loose sand, the team was able to plan MAHLI and APXS on some of the broken blocks right in front of the rover to investigate the grain size and composition of the local bedrock. We also planned a lot of remote sensing observations to assess sedimentary structures and chemistry. In addition, the plan includes environmental monitoring observations to assess atmospheric opacity search for dust devils and clouds, as well as an overnight APXS atmospheric observation. Then we’ll drive to a good location to get an even better view, and hopefully have some bedrock in our workspace to study next week.

I was on duty as LTP today, and the team held a science discussion to think about observation strategies as we traverse across the pediment. It’s exciting to think about everything that we might learn on the road ahead of us!

Written by Lauren Edgar, Planetary Geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center