21 June 2016

Over the weekend, the rover stopped after about 17 meters of the planned 65 meter drive. The rover is fine, the drive just tripped one of the (very conservative) limits on how the rover’s suspension was expected to behave, causing Curiosity to stop and check in with Earth. Since there is nothing jumping out at us as a contact science target where we stopped, in today’s plan we will try to make up for some of the lost distance from the weekend plan.

In the Sol 1378 plan, ChemCam has observations of some bedrock at the target “Tombua” and a rock named “Ai Ais”. Mastcam then will image the two ChemCam targets, as well as the Sol 1376 AEGIS target. Mastcam will also image some veins at a location called “Helgas”. After that, we will drive and collect some typical post-drive imaging.

On Sol 1379, we won’t have data down from Sol 1378 yet, so it is an untargeted plan. In the morning, ChemCam, NavCam, and Mastcam have some atmospheric observations. Then in the afternoon, ChemCam has some calibration observations, followed by a few more Mastcam atmospheric observations.

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