NASA’s Curiosity rover continues to do exciting science four thousand Martian days after touching down in Gale Crater on August 5, 2012. The rover recently drilled its 39th sample and then dumped the crushed rock into its belly for detailed analysis.

To investigate whether ancient Mars had the conditions necessary for microbial life, the rover slowly climbed 3 miles (5 kilometers) to the base of Mount Sharp, whose layers formed at different periods of Mars’ history and provide a record of how the planet was formed. The climate changed over time.

The final sample was collected from a target nicknamed Sequoia (all of the mission’s current science targets are from locations in California’s Sierra Nevada). Scientists hope the sample will reveal more about how Martian climate and habitability changed as the region became richer in sulfates; These minerals are likely formed in salt water that evaporated when Mars began to dry out billions of years ago. Eventually liquid water on Mars disappeared forever.

“The types of sulfate and carbonate minerals Curiosity’s instruments detected last year help us understand what Mars was like so long ago. We’ve been waiting for these results for decades, and now Sequoia will tell us more,” Ashwin said. Wasawada, a Curiosity project scientist based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Japan, is leading the mission.

Solving clues about Mars’ ancient climate requires detective work. In a recently published article Journal of Geophysical Research: PlanetsUsing data from Curiosity’s Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument, team members discovered a magnesium sulfate mineral called starkeite, which is associated with particularly dry climates like the present-day climate of Mars.

The team believes that sulfate minerals first formed in evaporated brine billions of years ago and then turned into starkeite as the climate continued to dry out to their current state. Such findings improve scientists’ understanding of how modern Mars emerged.

Time-tested rover

Curiosity is still going strong, having traveled nearly 20 miles (32 kilometers) since 2012 in an extremely cold environment covered in dust and radiation. Engineers are currently trying to fix an issue with the 34mm focal length left camera of the Mastcam device, one of the rover’s main “eyes”. In addition to providing color images of the rover’s surroundings, each of the two Mastcams helps scientists remotely determine the composition of rocks through the wavelengths, or spectra, of light they reflect in different colors.

To do this, Mastcam relies on filters located on a rotating wheel under each camera’s lens. Since September 19, the left camera’s filter wheel has been stuck between filter positions, the effects of which can be seen in the raw (unprocessed) footage of the mission. The task continues to gradually return the filter wheel to its default setting.

Not pushing this all the way, the mission will rely on the accurate Mastcam with its higher resolution and focal length of 100mm as the primary color imaging system. Ultimately, this will affect how the team observes scientific targets and rover routes: the right camera will need to capture nine times more images than the left camera to cover the same area. Teams will also have a poor ability to remotely observe the color spectrums of rocks.

Along with efforts to reverse filter, mission engineers continue to closely monitor the performance of the rover’s nuclear power source and expect it to provide sufficient power for years to come. They also found ways to overcome wear and tear on the rover’s drilling system and robotic arm joints. The software update also fixed bugs and added new capabilities to Curiosity, making long journeys easier for the rover and reducing wheel wear from steering (the previously added traction control algorithm also helped reduce wheel wear from sharp rocks).

Meanwhile, the team is preparing for a break of several weeks in November. Mars is about to disappear behind the sun, an event known as solar conjunction. The Sun’s plasma can interact with radio waves and potentially interfere with commands at this time. Engineers leave Curiosity from November 6 to November 28 with a to-do list; After this date, communication can be safely re-established. Source