Sols 899-902: Long weekend, long plan!

13 February 2015

Today we planned 4 sols to take the rover through President’s day weekend. We humans get a long weekend, but the rover has a lot of work to do! We were supposed to drive about 45 meters in the previous plan, but the data received this morning showed that the rover stopped after only 17 meters. I was on duty as the ChemCam science Payload Uplink Lead (sPUL) today, and in the science theme group meeting we were worried that the short drive would cause a major change in the plan, but it turned out not to be a problem. The rover drivers understand why the rover stopped early and had no concerns about simply continuing the drive in today’s plan. Even better, there was enough room in the plan to do the drive without changing how much time we had to do science!

The location where the rover stopped was mostly flat bedrock and large sand ripples: not where we planned to stop, but still plenty of science to do. On sol 899, ChemCam will analyze the target “Osiris” and on Sol 900 ChemCam will analyze “Garley.” Both of these targets are patches of bedrock, so the chemistry data, when combined with the many other observations of bedrock over the last few weeks and months, will help understand how the rocks change throughout the stratigraphic section.

Mastcam has an 8x3 mosaic of Osiris on Sol 899, which seems to have some fine layering that is barely visible in Navcam. On sol 900 Mastcam also will take a documentation image of Garley, a 2x2 mosaic of a layered rock near the rover called “Sneakover” (because it was snuck into the plan at the last minute), and a 2x2 mosaic of “Hermosa,” where the rover tracks cross a sand ripple.

On sol 901, ChemCam will make some passive (no laser) measurements of the sky, and then Curiosity will resume the drive that was cut short. After the drive, we have standard imaging to get our bearings, plus a Mastcam 360 degree mosaic and a Navcam cloud observation. The DAN instrument will do an active measurement after the drive to characterize the amount of light elements (such as the hydrogen in water) under the rover in the new location. And finally, ChemCam will do some routine measurements of the calibration targets.

On sol 902, the rover gets a bit of a rest, with just routine environmental measurements by RAD and REMS.

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.