Sol 1289: Third time’s the charm?

21 March 2016

The science that we planned over the weekend went smoothly, and we acquired some beautiful MAHLI and Mastcam images. However, the drive that was planned for Sol 1288 did not occur because the rover determined that a planned arm move would exceed a safety limit.. Because this fault is understood, we are going to try once again to drive onto a ridge just north of the rover.

Today’s plan includes some pre-drive science, a drive, and post-drive imaging. In the pre-drive science block, we’ll acquire a Navcam movie to search for clouds and monitor atmospheric opacity. Then we’ll use ChemCam and Mastcam to evaluate a target that had previously shown a high-silica signature (target “Koigab”). After the arm is stowed, we’ll use Mastcam to acquire a multispectral image of the DRT target “Sesrium Canyon” from the weekend plan. Hopefully the drive will go well and our post-drive imaging will show that we are in fact in a new location!

By Lauren Edgar

--Lauren is a Research Geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center and a member of the MSL science team.