Looking at the foothills of Mt. Sharp from the last parking position. This image was taken by Right Navigation Camera onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 2557 (2019-10-16 09:15:45 UTC). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

We did not receive our decisional data from MRO in time for today’s planning, so we decided to make the best use of the time and energy available using the untargeted investigations available to us.

Mastcam is busy with a 360 panorama, which will give context to all our past and future investigations in the area. In addition to the daytime ground-based observation, Mastcam wakes up in the dark to do an astronomical investigation of Phobos, followed – in daytime - by some calibration activities.

It’s not only Mastcam who will be busy over the weekend, though. ChemCam has two observations, which will together investigate three targets. As regular readers of this blog will know, ChemCam can use AEGIS, an image processing routine to find its own targets. It will be looking for one target in the workspace, and two to the side of the rover. We are now all looking forward to data from 5 sols of Curiosity activities – stay tuned!