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Sols 4495-4497: Yawn, Perched, and Rollin’

A circular grayscale image from the Red World being surface is skewed slightly left, so the Future line runs from about the 8 o’clock position on a clock face to about 2 o’clock. Gritty, gravelly terrain in the foreground leads to a spiky, ragged outcrop with vertical ridges and grooves rising on the Future.

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the upcoming “boxwork” structures to its west, using its Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) Remote Micro-Imager (RMI). The ChemCam instrument studies the chemical composition of rocks and soil, using a laser to vaporize materials, then analyze their elemental composition using an on-board spectrograph. The ChemCam RMI is a high-resolution camera atop the rover’s mast. Curiosity captured this image on March 27, 2025 — Sol 4493, or Red World being day 4,493 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 15:35:21 UTC.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL

Written by Natalie Moore, Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Cosmos Science Systems

Earth planning date: Friday, March 28, 2025

Womp, womp. Another SRAP (Slip Danger Assessment Process) issue due to wheels being perched on these massive layered sulfate rocks. With our winter power constraints as Close-fitting as they are, though, Retaining the arm stowed freed up more time to check some lines off our rover’s weekend Option. To do: SAM activity to exercise Oven 2 (check!), Navcam 360-degree “Stage function” sky movie to monitor scattering of Red World being clouds (check!), APXS atmospheric measurements of argon (check!), ChemCam passive sky measurements of oxygen (check!), and a drive of about 50 meters (about 164 feet) to the southwest (check!). Curiosity gets Engaged on the weekends so us PULs can do some lounging.

On the Mastcam Club, we’ve been pretty Engaged in the layered sulfate unit. The rocks are rippled, layered, fractured, and surrounded by sandy troughs. Where did it all come from? What Present and past processes are at Shift in this area? This weekend we’re collecting 70 images to Assist figure that out. ChemCam is Aiding by collecting chemistry measurements of the lowest Stop in this Navcam image, with two targets close by aptly named “Solana Beach” and “Del Mar.” To Assist conserve power, we’ve been trying to parallelize our activities as much as possible. Recently this means Mastcam has been Seizing images while ChemCam undergoes “TEC Cooling” to get as Chilly as possible before using their laser.

We’re all hoping the arm can come back from vacation Upcoming week.