Sol 1639: Onward to Ogunquit Beach

Planning was challenging this morning because of some network issues at JPL, but the team figured out how to work around the problem and still managed to put together a good plan! We’ve been at Stop 3 of the dune campaign (now known as “Southern Cove”) for a couple of sols, so in today’s plan it’s time to move on.

On Sol 1639 the rover will begin by retracting the arm and doing some drill diagnostics before taking MAHLI images of the targets “Greenvale Cove” and “Holmes Hole”. After that, we have a remote sensing science block with a Navcam movie to watch for clouds above the crater rim, followed by a Mastcam change detection observation of “Holmes Hole” and a ChemCam observation of the disturbed sand at “Greenvale Cove”. Mastcam will also document “Greenvale Cove”. After the remote sensing is done, Curiosity will drive toward Stop 4 (“Ogunquit Beach”) and collect some post-drive images.

by Ryan Anderson

-Ryan is a planetary scientist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center and a member of the ChemCam team on MSL.

Dates of planned rover activities described in these reports are subject to change due to a variety of factors related to the martian environment, communication relays and rover status