The terrain continues to challenge us as we make our way up onto the Greenheugh pediment. Monday's drive ended sooner than expected when the rover sensed the road was rockier than anticipated, so it paused to wait for further instructions from Earth. In the mean time, we took advantage of this brief pause to 'sniff' the rock field all around us.
First, we took ChemCam and Mastcam of "Tobar Mhoire" and "Ardalanish," both points on a gray-toned rock with laminations. Farther afield, the rover will capture large ChemCam RMI (10 images) and Mastcam (18 images) mosaics of "Helmsdale Fault" capturing the pediment edge. In addition, there will be a massive (58 images!)
Mastcam mosaic centered about "Feorachas," a remnant monolith in a field of various sedimentary structures. Finally, the rover will look to the north and capture "Torflundie Mire," one of several scoured areas across the pediment, in a 11 image Mastcam stereo mosaic.
Other standard imaging includes a Mastcam 360 for documenting the surrounding area, clast survey, and solar tau to measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere, as well as Navcam sky flats, line-of-sight to again look at the atmosphere in a different way, and a dust devil movie.
Related Links
Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory
Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com
Lunar Dreams and more
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Sols 3398-3400: The Road Ahead
Pasadena CA (JPL) Mar 01, 2022
The drive on Sol 3397 went well and gave us some good perspective on the road ahead, as seen in the above Navcam image. Curiosity is perched at the edge of the pediment, carefully planning our route to climb fully on top of the pediment capping unit, and the team is eager to investigate these rocks! This 3-sol plan was a typical weekend plan, with opportunities for contact science, remote sensing, and a drive. Although our workspace mostly consisted of loose sand, the team was able to plan MAHLI a ... read more