Sol 887: Sample Analysis

2 February 2015

I'm SOWG Chair today, so I called in to enough of the operations planning teleconferences on Saturday to ensure that I was familiar with the goals for Sol 887. Most people don't like working on weekends, but I definitely felt that it was worthwhile to do as much as possible while MSL is active on the surface of Mars. The activities planned for Sols 885-886 went well, and we received images showing that the plasma "plumes" created by the ChemCam laser blew holes in the pile of drill tailings (e.g., just right of center in the image above).

The Sol 887 plan focuses on delivering some of the new drill sample to SAM and performing a SAM evolved gas analysis of it. This requires so much power that we can't do much else on Sol 887, and Sol 888 activities will be limited by the availability of power.

by Ken Herkenhoff