Sols 871-872: A Software Upgrade is Available. Install Now?
16 January 2015Today’s plan for sols 871 and 872 is our last chance to get some science done before we begin a week of no activity while the engineering team upgrades the rover software. The plan is to do two ChemCam “rasters” on targets “Funk Valley” and “Rainbow Basin”.… Read More
Sol 870 Update: Keeping MAHLI Safe
15 January 2015This morning the MSL operations team realized that the results of the MAHLI activities planned for Sol 870 will not be received until Saturday. Therefore, if there is a problem on Sol 870 that halts the sequence while the MAHLI dust cover is open, the cover would remain open through the… Read More
Sols 869-870: Broken rock
14 January 2015The "mini-drill" test on the Mojave rock target completed successfully, but MAHLI images taken after the test showed that the rotary-percussive drilling fractured the rock. This was not expected, so the tactical team had to quickly change the Sol 869-870 plan. While we were… Read More
Sols 867-868: Mini-Drill at Mojave
12 January 2015Over the weekend, Curiosity did a short drive to get into position to drill at “Mojave.” The previously acquired MAHLI images of this target show some really interesting crystals, and we’re excited to use CheMin to figure out what minerals are present.The main event in… Read More
Sols 864-866: Hello Again, Pink Cliffs!
9 January 2015The drive toward “Pink Cliffs” went according to plan, so in the Sol 864 plan we will be doing a very short drive (called a “bump”) toward our drilling target: “Mojave” (shown above). Before the drive, ChemCam will analyze 5 locations in a line across a possible… Read More
Sols 862-863: Goodbye Whale Rock!
7 January 2015It’s time to hit the road again! In the Sol 862-863 plan, we are wrapping things up at “Whale Rock” and then driving about 85 m toward “Pink Cliffs”, where we hope to drill sometime soon. On Sol 862, Mastcam will take a few parting shots of Whale Rock and… Read More
Sols 860-861: Happy New (Earth) Year!
5 January 2015Happy New (Earth) Year! After the long holiday plans, the Curiosity team is back to planning two days at a time. The main priority for the sol 860 plan is to use MAHLI to take close-up color images of the targets “Sierra Nevada”, “Santa Ana,” and… Read More
Sols 853-859: Christmas on Mars
29 December 2014On December 19th, the MSL tactical team planned 10 sols (!) on Mars, so that everyone could take a nice break over the holidays. That means that today we are assessing all of those sols of data, and checking out all of the “presents” that Curiosity acquired for us! At the… Read More
Sol 843-852: Brushing
19 December 2014The Sol 842 command sequences were successfully received by Curiosity, and all the data needed for planning were returned to Earth, including MAHLI images of the right front wheel. These and other data were thoroughly analyzed, and the slip risk assessment team concluded that it is safe to… Read More
Sol 842: Trying again...
18 December 2014Unfortunately, the Sol 841 command sequences could not be sent to MSL because of a transmitter problem at the Deep Space Network (DSN) antenna. This reminded me not to take for granted communications between Earth and Mars, even though such problems are rare. Bad weather over a DSN… Read More
