Sols 860-861: Happy New (Earth) Year!

5 January 2015

Happy New (Earth) Year!

After the long holiday plans, the Curiosity team is back to planning two days at a time. The main priority for the sol 860 plan is to use MAHLI to take close-up color images of the targets “Sierra Nevada”, “Santa Ana,” and “Tecoya”. These targets were analyzed by APXS over the holidays, so it’s important to get good images to go with the chemistry.

For sol 861, ChemCam will analyze the Tecoya target, and a target called “Last Chance Canyon”. ChemCam will also take a series of images of “Newberry” to test focusing at long range. Mastcam will take color images of Newberry and Last Chance Canyon to support the ChemCam observations. The rest of Sol 861 will be Mastcam images of targets “Telescope Peak,” “Fairview Valley,” and “Gem Hill” as part of a campaign to watch for any changes in the images. Mastcam will also make a routine “clast survey” observation, where it looks at a patch of ground near the rover to study the sizes of the pebbles and rocks (collectively called “clasts”). Clast surveys are done periodically to get an idea of how the clasts change throughout the traverse.

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.