Sol 962: MAHLI wheel imaging
20 April 2015The Sol 960 drive went as planned, for a total of over 102 meters! The rover has driven far enough since the last full set of MAHLI images were acquired that it's time to take another full set to look for more wheel wear. So my focus today as MAHLI/MARDI uplink lead was on… Read More
Sol 959-961: Daughter of the Sun
17 April 2015The short drive on sol 958 was a success, placing us at the top of a small ridge, facing an outcrop dubbed “Daughter of the Sun”. The plan for sol 959 is to do some ChemCam and Mastcam of targets “Gold” and “Espinoza”, followed by several Mastcam mosaics. The… Read More
Sol 958: Officially 10k!
16 April 2015The Sol 957 drive went well, and the rover has officially driven 10 kilometers! (Last week I announced that we had reached 10k, but that was 10k measured by how many times the wheels have spun, not how far across the surface of Mars the rover has gone. Now, no matter how you measure it, we’ve… Read More
Sol 957: Limited Downlink
15 April 2015MSL drove about 65 meters on Sol 956, then took some nice images of the path ahead. As we continue to drive each sol, acquiring images of the terrain around us is important to the science team. We don't want to miss anything! So the Sol 957 plan includes ChemCam RMI and… Read More
Sol 956: Mercury Transit
14 April 2015With the last portion of the Telegraph Peak sample delivered to SAM and analyzed by APXS, we are ready to keep driving. In the sol 956 plan, there is a quick science block in the morning, to allow the rover to take a couple of Mastcam pictures of nearby boulders called “Waucoba” and… Read More
Sols 953-955: Dumping Telegraph Peak
13 April 2015Our sol 952 drive went well, and we’re very close to crossing over into a new “quad” of the map that was made before landing (meaning we will get a whole new bunch of target names to choose from!). On Saturday the team planned for a lengthy ChemCam focus test on sol 953, where… Read More
Sol 952: Longer drive
10 April 2015MSL drove 18 meters on Sol 951, as planned, putting the rover in position to image the terrain ahead and plan a longer drive on Sol 952. The total "wheel odometry" for the MSL mission is now over 10 km! But the total traverse distance is still less than 10 km, because the… Read More
Sol 951: 10k
9 April 2015We are continuing our driving tour of Artist’s Drive, and we should be reaching the 10k mark on Curiosity’s odometer in the sol 951 plan! The rover will start off the day with a targeted science block full of Mastcam observations. We are planning two Mastcam mosaics looking at the… Read More
Sol 950: Taking in the Scenery along Artist’s Drive
8 April 2015Like most tourists who visit Artist’s Drive on Earth, Curiosity is busy taking lots of photos to document the valley walls of Artist’s Drive on Mars. We are officially on the road again, and working our way through a very scenic drive. I’m the Geology Science… Read More
Sol 949: Leaving Garden City
7 April 2015After an extensive study of the veins at Garden City, it’s finally time to continue on our path down Artist’s Drive. We’ve collected a lot of really great data, including MAHLI images like this one from Sol 946, which will help us to determine the history of fluid flow through… Read More
