Earth planning date: Friday, Feb. 7, 2025
We’re persevering with our merry approach alongside “Texoli” butte, heading towards the boxworks function within the distance, our subsequent main waypoint. It is a sequence of large-scale ridges, which seem from orbital knowledge to be a fancy fracture community.
In fact, we don’t really count on to get there till late fall 2025, on the earliest. Our drives are lengthy proper now (the weekend plan has a 50-meter drive, or about 164 toes) however we’re nonetheless taking the time to doc all the fantastic geology as we go, and never simply rushing previous all the cool issues!
As Conor talked about in Wednesday’s weblog, energy is changing into a problem proper now. These of us within the northern hemisphere could be pondering (eagerly anticipating!) in regards to the return of Spring however Mars is heading into colder climate, that means we have to use extra energy for warming up the rover. Nonetheless, we’re additionally in a really attention-grabbing cloud season (as Conor talked about), so the environmental theme group (ENV) are eager to do a number of imaging proper now. This implies very cautious planning and negotiating between ENV and the geology theme group (GEO) to benefit from the facility we do have. Fortunately, this plan has one thing for everybody.
The GEO group was handed a weekend workspace containing a jumble of rocks — some layered, some not. Not one of the rocks have been very massive however we have been capable of plan APXS and MAHLI on a brushed rock floor at “Aliso Canyon” and on a small, flat unbrushed goal, “Bridge to Nowhere,” near the rover. ChemCam will use the LIBS laser to shoot three bedrock targets, sampling common bedrock at “Newcomb,” some cracked bedrock at “Devore” and a few of the extra layered materials at “Rubio Canyon.” Mastcam will doc the ChemCam LIBS targets. Along with the cloud imaging, now we have a number of different imaging on this plan. We’re in place proper now to look again down on the “Marker Band Valley,” which we first entered nearly a thousand sols in the past! Earlier than we go an excessive amount of additional alongside the facet of Texoli butte and lose sight of the Marker Band Valley for a while, each ChemCam and Mastcam will make the most of this to picture the Marker Band Valley and the “Marker Band.” Different photographs embrace ChemCam distant photographs of cap rocks within the distance and two Mastcams of near-field (i.e., near the rover) troughs.
Written by Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, Planetary Geologist at College of New Brunswick
