This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 3626.
For the first time in a little while we’re at a new location after a drive in the last plan, which means new targets for the Geo team to investigate, and slightly different viewsheds for ENV to work with. Power was a bit tight, especially for the first sol with two hours of science time, a drive, and arm activities. Still, we managed to pack in lots of targeted science before driving away.
We’re staring the first sol with the first of the arm maneuvers, allowing APXS to get a look at a bedrock target called ‘Pacu.’ Pacu will also be the subject of a ChemCam LIBS observation, and ChemCam will be rounding out their sol’s imaging with a long distance mosaic of 'Los Brincos.' Mastcam is also getting in on the action, with the similarly named ‘Arapari’ and ‘Arapixi,’ as well as 'Baganara Island,' (part of which can be seen in the bottom left of the image above) and documenting Pacu. ENV is also surveying the location, trying to catch dust devils. Finally, MAHLI is returning to Pacu before we drive off.
Just because we’ve driven to a new location doesn’t mean we have to wait to plan more science. After driving in the middle of the plan, such as on the second sol in this plan, we can still do ‘untargeted’ science, which just means we don’t have the benefit of seeing exactly what our new location looks like. Because for ENV we don’t necessarily care as much about what’s right near to us, this means we can usually fit in a good number of observations. This time, that includes a suprahorizon cloud movie, a dust devil movie, a full tau observation and a line of sight at the crater rim. ChemCam is also using AEGIS to autonomously select a target for analysis.
Written by Alex Innanen, Atmospheric Scientist at York University
