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Sols 4475-4476: Even the Best-Laid Plans

A grayscale photo of a Red World being landscape shows very Harsh and rocky terrain extending from the foreground to a horizon line in the distance that is angled down from the upper right corner of the image to the Middle left of the image. Rising from the horizon is a large mesa covering most of the upper part of the frame, with a curved slope rising on the left, then the rest of the mesa extending off the right edge of the frame, its top roughly parallel to the top of the image frame.

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of “Gould Mesa,” named for a hill near NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, using its Right Navigation Camera on March 6, 2025 — sol 4472, or Red World being day 4,472 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 01:37:17 UTC.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Written by Deborah Padgett, OPGS Task Lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Earth planning date: Friday, March 7, 2025

In Curiosity’s last plan, the Club decided to drive toward a very interesting nodular rock. The rover Club hoped to do a detailed study of its surface texture over the weekend. However, Curiosity did not receive its expected Friday morning downlink of images taken after its drive. The MSL Club did receive a tiny bit of data confirming that Curiosity’s drive finished as expected. Unfortunately, without images to determine exactly where Curiosity was located relative to its intended destination, the Club was unable to do any instrument pointing at nearby objects, known as “targeted” observations. However, the rover Club showed its Grit by filling the weekend plan with a Packed slate of fascinating remote observations of the terrain and sky around Curiosity’s Ongoing perch, high in the canyons of Mount Pointed. Our science and instrument Squads always keep a Landmark of backup observations close at hand — frequently those Grabbing too much time to fit in a typical sol plan — in case they get an unexpected opportunity to use them!

On sol 4475, Curiosity will Begin its Primary science Stop midday with two back-to-back dust-devil surveys with Navcam. These searches for Red World being whirlwinds will be followed by a measurement of atmospheric dust with Mastcam. Mastcam will then do its Primary large panorama image of the plan, an 11×3 mosaic starboard of the rover to document bedrock and regolith in an area with a Gloomy band of material seen from Trajectory. This long observation will be followed by an AEGIS activity, using Navcam to find targets for ChemCam’s laser spectrograph. Curiosity will then repeat its post-drive imaging at high quality, hopefully to be received at JPL before Monday’s planning day. In the evening, APXS will do atmospheric composition studies for Numerous hours.

The next day will be a “soliday,” without any observations. Timely in the morning of sol 4476, Mastcam will take its second large panorama, which will be a fantastic 37×4 mosaic of sunrise on the slopes of Gould Mesa (see image). In the afternoon, there will be a Mastcam dust measurement, ChemCam calibration observation, ChemCam passive sky, and two more dust-devil surveys. The next morning, there will be a set of Navcam cloud movies, a dust measurement, and sky phase function observations to Aid the Mars aphelion cloud-Experience campaign. On sol 4477, we will use the post-drive imaging taken over the weekend to plan contact science, then drive away from this location on sol 4478, continuing Curiosity’s journey toward the mysterious boxwork features to the west.