Sols 1477-1479: Rocky Road

30 September 2016

Everything went well in our previous plan and we are making slow but steady progress over rough terrain toward our next drill location. We should get there by next weekend!

Today’s plan starts off with a bunch of remote sensing on Sol 1477. Navcam has an atmospheric observation, followed by ChemCam analysis of the targets “Chadibe”, “Bobonong”, and “Dukwi”. Mastcam will document those targets once ChemCam is done with them, as well as the ChemCam AEGIS target from yesterday. Mastcam also has a small mosaic of the target “Etsha” to study its fine-scale layers, and a larger mosaic to extend the drive-direction pan from Sol 1475. The Etsha mosaic will be repeated again later in the day. In the evening, APXS will analyze the chemistry of the target “Caugula” and “Catumbela” will be analyzed overnight. We will brush the dust off of Catumbela before the overnight analysis, and MAHLI will take images of the targets to support APXS.

On Sol 1478, ChemCam has observations of Catumbela and “Francistown,” with Mastcam support. Later in the day, ChemCam will do an automatically targeted AEGIS observation and MARDI. Sol 1479 will be full of routine engineering activities, so we didn’t plan any science blocks.

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