Sols 928-929 Checking Out Garden City
16 March 2015Over the weekend, Curiosity bumped closer to the target “Garden City” located in “Artist’s Drive.” “Garden City” is an intriguing target because it contains a lot of really big veins, captured here in this Mastcam image from Sol 926. Today’s… Read More
Sols 924-927: Garden City Here We Come!
13 March 2015Yesterday was a challenging day on Mars and Earth. On Mars, the rover stopped its drive early because it detected that its wheels were slipping in the sand, so we weren’t where we expected to be and we had to adjust our observations accordingly. At the same time on Earth, some network issues… Read More
Sol 923: Getting out of Dodge
11 March 2015The plan for today, as our SOWG (Science Operations Working Group) chair put it, is to “get out of Dodge”! We will be driving to a location where we can do “full MAHLI wheel imaging” in the coming sols. During the drive, the rover will stop long enough for Mastcam to get an… Read More
Sol 922: Arm in Action
10 March 2015Good news! We’re allowed to use the arm again! The engineers have done all the diagnostics needed, and so today’s plan was dominated by arm activities for science. In the morning of sol 922, there is a short science block during which ChemCam and Mastcam will analyze the target… Read More
Sol 921: Wrapping Up Diagnostics
9 March 2015The engineers on the team have been working hard to understand the current fluctuation that caused the arm to halt on Sol 911, and they are expecting to wrap up their diagnostics this week! In the meantime, we on the science team have been keeping ourselves and the rover busy by using the remote… Read More
Sols 918-920: Diagnostic testing
6 March 2015More diagnostic data are needed to fully understand the cause of the Sol 911 fault, so no arm activities are planned for this weekend. The Mastcam thermal characterization will be completed early on Sol 918, while it's still cold. Another test to diagnose the power issue is planned… Read More
Sol 917: Mastcam Thermal Characterization
5 March 2015I'm MAHLI/MARDI uplink lead today, but there hasn't been much for me to do because of the restriction on arm activities following last week's fault. The arm is being used exclusively for diagnostic testing to determine the cause of the fault; test results are being analyzed by the MSL… Read More
Sols 908-913: Drilling Telegraph Peak and Leaving Pahrump
27 February 2015It’s been a busy week on Mars, as usual! The big activity in the Sol 908 plan was drilling at the target “Telegraph Peak”. After the drilling, on sol 909 ChemCam made measurements of the targets “Tapeats” and “Humbug”, and Mastcam took supporting images of… Read More
Sols 905-907: Testing "Telegraph Peak"
20 February 2015The latest "bump" placed the rover in a good position for detailed study of the outcrop of interest, as we all hoped. The plan that will take the rover through the weekend is, in the words of the SOWG Chair Doug Ming, "jam-packed" with science observations. The MSL tactical team is… Read More
Sols 903-904: A Bumping Day on Mars
18 February 2015Curiosity is in search of the next drill target, and the main activity in today’s plan is to “bump” closer to a rock outcrop for contact science. Curiosity will perform a short drive, which will set us up to use the instruments on the rover’s arm to assess… Read More
