NASA’s Curiosity rover’s planned science activities are tailored to the usual operating space and spatial constraints, allowing for preliminary data analysis and the continuation of important scientific observations.

World planning date: Wednesday, May 22, 2024

One of the biggest problems with using a rover on another planet is that we don’t always know exactly what’s ahead of us when we park after the trip. Our rover science teams and planners (who actually plan the drives) are doing the best they can with what we have, which is a combination of high-resolution images from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Orbiter Reconnaissance and images looking back at us from Curiosity. planned travel route.

But at the end of the day, on any given planning day, we don’t know what we’ll be dealing with until we get there. Sometimes this is because the ride “breaks down” and ends prematurely; It is an event that causes the rover’s mobility systems to exceed their maximum allowable limits while driving on rocky or sandy terrain. This was not the case today as the 30 meter journey towards the Gediz Vallis canal crossing we had planned for Monday went perfectly. Instead, our “work area” (the hand-accessible area in front of the rover), consisting mostly of sand and smaller rocks, wasn’t as exciting as we expected.

Adapting the mission plan

That is why today it was decided that the “contact science” plan, where we take our hands off the first salt for a long list of actions before moving on to the second salt, will be transformed into a “touch and go” plan, where we mainly focus. remote sensing and a more limited list of contact actions (“touch”) and separation at the first salt (“go”). From an environmental science perspective, these types of major rearrangements of plans can be a bit stressful, as they often require last-minute alterations of our pre-planned activities, but today’s transition was fortunately pretty smooth.

The decision to change the plan was still a good one; We parked our left front wheel on a small pile of rocks (see image below) which limited how much hand movements we could safely make. The job was interesting. Moving the disk from second sol to first sol also means we can get more useful data back to Earth before the long weekend planning begins on Friday.

Future scientific activity and planning

Despite the less interesting area of ​​study (and leaving aside the fact that calling any part of another planet’s surface “less interesting” seems a bit crazy), we still pack a decent amount of science into this plan. The first dream begins with remote sensing, starting with ChemCam LIBS at Lake Catherine and two ChemCam RMI mosaics, one at Cookenan Butte, which has been populating our eastern landscape for months, and the other at Echo Ridge, a feature near the rover. now they travel in the hope of understanding their origins. The Mastcam then documents the LIBS target and takes several photos of “Lake Evelyn” and “Lake Emerson,” two slightly larger rocks located outside the current study area.

We complement this remote sensing session with some environmental science, including Mastcam tau to monitor the amount of dust in the atmosphere, dust devil film, and Navcam observations of dust and sand on the rover’s deck. Before leaving, we take our hand in watching MAHLI for a short while, overlooking Lake Catherine. Curiosity wraps up its first operation on this as it departs, followed by our standard set of post-voyage images to help us plan for Friday, including another mosaic of the Navcam deck tracking to see if the disk is moving around sand and dust.

Since we will be in a new location, the second solution of this plan is targetless remote sensing. ChemCam will use AEGIS to autonomously position the LIBS target at our new location, then we’ll shoot a series of short Navcam videos to look for dust devils around the rover and shoot a 3×1 Navcam line-of-sight mosaic to determine the amount of dust in Gale’s atmosphere. Shortly after noon, Curiosity will declare day (or actually sol) and fall asleep again for the remainder of this plan, occasionally waking up to call home with the data it has collected. As always, DAN, REMS and RAD continue to work hard in the background; RAD, especially given the recent high solar activity.