Sol 1501: Welcome to Bar Harbor

25 October 2016

On Sol 1500 Curiosity drove 30 m to the south, crossing into a quadrangle that we informally named “Bar Harbor,” after Bar Harbor, Maine.  As a reminder, prior to landing we divided up the landing ellipse and nearby areas into square quads (1.5 km on a side), and assigned each quad… Read More

Sol 1500: So long Sebina

24 October 2016

Over the weekend Curiosity completed her investigation of the “Sebina” drill site, and we’re back on the road again.  Before we hit the road we took another MAHLI image of the drill hole, and noticed just how quickly the wind has swept away the fines.  The two images… Read More

Sols 1497-1499: A Very Busy Weekend

21 October 2016

We’ve got quite a plan in store for the weekend, with every single instrument doing something, multiple arm activities, and a drive. Curiosity’s battery will be run all the way down to 35% which is quite rare, but necessary when there’s a lot to do! Sol 1497 starts off with… Read More

Sol 1496: Successful Drill!

21 October 2016

Yesterday’s plan went well and we have a new drill hole on Mars! The plan for Sol 1496 starts with a ChemCam passive observation of the dump pile of material from “Quela”, our previous drill hole. ChemCam also has passive observations of the tailings from the new hole at… Read More

Sol 1495: Full drill

19 October 2016

The thumbnail of the Sol 1494 MAHLI image showed that the Quela dump pile had been moved by the wind again!  The MAHLI team is concerned that windblown sand and dust might damage or contaminate the camera's optics, so they decided to open the MAHLI dust cover only for images taken from 25… Read More

Name Approved for Feature on Mars: Ruhea

18 October 2016

The IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature has approved the name Ruhea for a crater on Mars. For more information, see the map for MC-29 in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature.

Sol 1494: A windy sol

18 October 2016

When we looked at the latest data from MSL this morning, we noticed that the MAHLI and ChemCam RMI images of the Quela dump pile were unexpectedly offset from the center of the pile.  After looking at more of the recent images, it became clear that the dump pile had been moved by… Read More

Sol 1493: Cleaning CHIMRA

17 October 2016

The activities planned for last weekend went well, so preparations for drilling continued on Sol 1493.  In the morning, a Right Mastcam mosaic of a ridge to the west of the rover will be followed by a passive ChemCam spectral measurement of the sieved fraction of the Quela drill… Read More

Sols 1491-1492: Soliday at Sebina

17 October 2016

With the weekend plan, we officially started our drill campaign on the target “Sebina,” so we will be staying in this location through the week. On Sol 1491 we dumped out the post-sieve sample from our previous drill hole at “Quela”, and did some brushing on Sebina, followed… Read More

Sols 1489-1490: 100 m of Mount Sharp!

12 October 2016

As of today, Curiosity has reached an elevation that is 100 m above the Confidence Hills site, where we first encountered the Murray formation.  That means that in the last 2 years we’ve climbed through 100 m of stratigraphy forming the base of Mount Sharp.  This is amazing… Read More