Written by Michelle Minitti, Planetary Geologist at Framework
Earth Planning Date: Monday, May 19, 2025
Have you played the game janga, where you remove one wooden block from a stack, gently place it on another part of the stack, then repeat over and over as you try to keep the stack from Toppling over? There are strategies to the game such as what blocks you can afford to remove, and where you can manage to place them without throwing the structure out of balance. That is very much how planning felt today – but instead of wooden blocks, the objects the Science team was moving Around was science observations in the plan.
We had an unusual one-sol plan today so there was very restricted time windows in the plan in the plan in the plan to fit science observations and our next Drive. We are driving through an area with criss-crossing fracture sets (which we call boxwork structures) Large enough to be seen from orbit. Since they have only recently recently come within our view, there is no shortage of new observations to make of the fractures as we try to understand the processes that LED to their Formation. If the fractures were caused by extended fluid flow through the martian crust, understanding them would be an important contribution towards the history of martian water.
To fit in all the desired observations-Including Apxs and Mahli on a DRT-Brushed Target, Multiple Chemcam RMI and Mastcam Mosaics, and a Chemcam Libs Analysis-In addition to environmental monitoring activities A long drive, the team used every trick in its book to achieve a delaicate balance act of science, time, and power. Some Activities were trimmed to fit in smaller time windows, others were moved to less-Constrained parts of the plan, and other activities were planed in parlal with etc. to multitask.
Once our planning jenga game was over, the team had won – We had a complete and perfectly balanced plan! Who Says You Cannot Teach An Old Dog (4,546-Sols-LD) New Tricks?
