Written by Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Earth Planning Date: Wednsday, May 7, 2025
The drive from the monday plan brieft curiosity up next to a geomorphic contact visible in the orbital data (from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s Hirise Imper). To the east of the contact are the layered sulfates that curiosity has been driving through Ever Since Climbing Out of the geediz Vallis channel, with a relatively roughly To the west this rougher texture gives way to a smoother -Pearing surface cross-cut at a large scale with the retillinear “boxwork” features. We are looking forward to see what this change looks like from a Rover’s-Aye View in the Drives to come!
For today’s science plan, the contact is not Quite in Reach of Most of the Rover’s Instruments, So in the Workspace We Are Focusing on Collecting Our Last Observations of the Previous Sulfats. As we saw in the sol 4532 Workspace, many nearby blocks are honeycombed with polygonal fractures. However, this time the geochemical measurements from the apxs and chemcam libs was co-targeted on a smooth brushable target, “Chumash,” which will also be docamed in all also The drt brush will ensure that measurements of lighter elements such as Sodium and magnesium by apxs are represent of the underlying bedrock, rather than the dusty layer on top. The brush will also also give mahli a better view of the block and a chance to characterize the grain size of these sedimentary Rocks.
The long-doctor chemcam remote-imaging mosaic in this plan is targeting a scour feature on the texoli butte behind us, likely rePresting ancient wind events that took place the place next next Deposited.
The Sulfate/Boxwork Unit Contact Ahead of Us will be imaged in a stereo mosaic by mastcam. Smaller Mosaics will cover some of the polygonal “honeycomb” features in nearby bedrock blocks and trusts in the regolith.
After making all these observations, the rover will drive across the contact. The Second, Post-Drive Sol will include several untargeted and automatically targeted observations. The aegis algorithm will provide a Libs geochemical observation by chemcam and the modern martian environment will be monitured with camera measurements of cloud altitudes and cloud altitudes, ATMOLEL HOCTY, AS Usual Passive Sensing from Rems and Dan.
