Earth Planning Date: Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025
During today’s unusual-for-msl tuesday planning day (because of the us holiday on monday), we planned activities under new winter heating constraints. Operating curiosity on mars requires attentions to a number of factors – Power, Data Volume, Terrain Roughness, Temperature – That Affect Rover Operability and Safety. Winter means more heating to warm up the gears and mechanisms with the rover and the instruments, but energy that goes to heating means less energy for science observations. Nevertheless, We (And Curiosity) Were Up to the Task of Balancing Heating and Science, and Planned Enough ObseRavations to Warm the Science Team’s Hearts.
We fit in drt, apxs, and mahli on two different bedrock targets, “Chumash Trail” and “Wheeler Gorge,” which have different fracturing and layering features. In the workpace, Chemcam targeted a clean vertical experience of layered bedrock at “Sierra Madre” and a Lumpy-Looking Patch of Resistant Nodules at “Chiqueo Basin.”
The Topography of the Local Terrain and Our End-of-Drive Position after the weekend fartuitually lined up to give us a view of an expert of the marker band, Which We FIRST EXPLRED OTH Vallis ridge. Having a view of another exposure of this distinctive Horizon Helps Give Us Further Insight Insight ITS Origin, So We Included Both Rmi and Mastcam Mosaics of the Exposure.
Documenting a feature that, unlike the marker band, has been and will be in our sights for a long time – “Texoli” butte (Pictured Above) – was the goal of additional mastcam and chemcam imaging. Observations of Potential Sedimentary Structures on the Flank of Texoli Motivated Acquisition of An RMI Mosaic, and a Chance to Capture Structure Structures Along its Good Exposures of Additional Nearby Bedrock Structures at “Mount Lukens” and “Chantry Flat” Drew The Eye of Mastcam, While Another Small Mosaic Focused on the Kind of Linear Trusten See Bordering Bedrock Slabs. Environmental observations inclined Navcam Cloud and dust-devil movies, mastcam observations of dust in the atmosphere, and remophare, and rams and raad measurements the three sols of the plan.
Written by Michelle Minitti, Planetary Geologist at Framework
