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Sols 4287-4288: Back on the Road

A grayscale photo of the Martian surface shows rocky terrain in shades of medium gray, with larger slabs and smaller rocks interspersed with areas of smooth soil, but several small-to-medium rocks stand out — in the middle-left and bottom parts of the frame — having surfaces much brighter and lighter-colored than anything around them.
This image was taken by Mast Camera (Mastcam) aboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4284 — Martian day 4,284 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Aug. 24, 2024, at 20:32:43 UTC.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Earth planning date: Monday, Aug. 26, 2024

Today’s planning day was a good example of how our team comes together to make quick decisions based on new information and science priorities.

The original intent of today’s plan was to perform contact science on some interesting bright-toned rubbly rocks in our workspace, seen in the image above. These rocks were just a short bump away from the location of our last sampling campaign and the team had been eyeing them for a few weeks, interested in the details of their composition from the APXS instrument and their morphology from MAHLI. However, before we ever unstow our robotic arm to perform these types of observations, our Rover Planners and Surface Property Scientists perform a “Slip Risk Assessment.” This assessment is used to determine whether the rover’s wheels are stable on the ground so that we can safely unstow the heavy robotic arm and place the arm-mounted instruments very close to the surface. In today’s case, the team determined that it was not safe to unstow our arm. If the science team was interested in observing the bright-toned rocks in our workspace, it would require adjusting the rover’s position and performing the observations in the next planning cycle, impacting our overall mission timeline. 

With this information on hand, the science team had an excellent discussion, quickly assessing the pros and cons of sticking around with a small adjustment to get contact science at this location in our next plan, or continuing down the road to our next waypoint. I always enjoy listening to these discussions; they are led by our Long-Term Planners and provide the opportunity for all science advocates to voice their opinions. In today’s case, the science team decided to move along. This location had been opportunistic to begin with and more juicy science targets are certainly to come. Time is a precious resource to us, and we often consider the timeline cost of any given science observation, weighing the relative science benefit to the cost of planning cycles.

So given this reworking of priorities, today’s two-sol plan was adjusted to include targeted science on the first sol before driving away towards our next waypoint, followed by another sol with untargeted science. Our drive takes us about 25 meters north and we’ll pause part way through the drive to take Mastcam imaging of some bright nodular-appearing rocks to examine their relationship to other rock types.

Between the two sols of this plan, we’ll perform an empty-cell analysis of the CheMin cell used for our last sampling campaign, to determine if we have dumped all the sample out of it for future use with another sampling campaign. As always, we performed our normal environmental monitoring observations.

Onward, Curiosity!

Written by Elena Amador-French, Science Operations Coordinator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Last Updated
Aug 28, 2024
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NASA Science Editorial Team

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A grayscale landscape photo from Mars, showing a broad, medium gray, rock-strewn plain in the foreground extending far into the distance, surrounded by several hills. The closest hill, in the lower right corner, rises up toward the side of the frame, and is darker than the floor below. A little farther out, on the left, a gentle slope rises from the low middle of the frame to middle of the left side; it’s about the same color as the valley floor, except for a band at its farthest edge, which darkens abruptly as if covered in shadow. The terrain appears softer than the ground below, more sandy than rocky. Beyond that along the same rising plane is a much lighter area, with scattered tiny peaks that are darker – looking like the top of a baked meringue pie. The channel floor runs between these hills, then appears to curve toward the right, behind the first hill and in front of the second. Finally, one other rounded peak appears above the horizon, behind these other two hills in the lower right of the frame, all of this below a light-gray sky filling more than half of the frame above.
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