Sols 908-913: Drilling Telegraph Peak and Leaving Pahrump

27 February 2015

It’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 2015

The 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 2015

 Curiosity 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

Sols 899-902: Long weekend, long plan!

13 February 2015

Today we planned 4 sols to take the rover through President’s day weekend. We humans get a long weekend, but the rover has a lot of work to do! We were supposed to drive about 45 meters in the previous plan, but the data received this morning showed that the rover stopped after only 17… Read More

Second Planetary Data Workshop - Save the Date

12 February 2015

Conference Date: June 8-10, 2015 Venue:  High Country Conference Center, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, ArizonaThe purpose of this worskhop is to provide a forum for discussion of available planetary data, including information on how the data are found, downloaded,… Read More

Sols 896-898: In search of the next drill target

11 February 2015

After completing our drilling activities at the Pink Cliffs outcrop, Curiosity is ready to move on to the next location.  But where to drill?  We’re searching for something that is chemically very different from the last drill target (Mojave2).  After much discussion, we… Read More

Sols 894-895: “You do have the coolest job in the world”

9 February 2015

The planning day kicked off to a great start, with the SOWG Chair (Aileen Yingst) reminding us that we do have the coolest job in the world.  I’m the Geology Theme Lead today, and it certainly feels like an exciting job.  In this plan we’ve managed to use almost every… Read More

Sols 891-893: Sample Transfer to SAM

6 February 2015

The three sol plan will keep Curiosity very busy this weekend.  The main activities in this plan include dropping off part of the Mojave2 drill sample to the SAM instrument, and some remote sensing activities with Mastcam, ChemCam and Navcam.  The samples that we’re dropping off to… Read More

Sol 890: CheMin Analysis

5 February 2015

MSL's batteries are almost fully charged, so the Sol 890 plan includes another CheMin measurement of the "Mojave2" drill sample.  CheMin and SAM require more power than the other instruments, but we want to better understand the mineral composition of the drill sample before we dump the… Read More

Sol 889: Vein target

4 February 2015

The Sol 888 data show that the rover's batteries are recharging, and we received more data than expected.  So Sol 889 planning is less constrained by power, and we were able to include ChemCam and Mastcam observations of the dump pile (center of this image).  In the afternoon,… Read More