Written by Ashley Stroupe, Mission Operations Engineer and Rover Planner at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Earth planning date: Friday, Aug. 1, 2025.
Now that we now have reached August, our “landiversary” (anniversary of touchdown — Aug. 5 PDT) is lower than every week away! The staff is trying ahead to having the ability to rejoice the milestone of our rover changing into a youngster at 13. At this time’s picture is a stupendous back-lit late afternoon picture of the close by mountains and the distant crater rim. These views make engaged on Mars by no means get outdated!
The primary sol of in the present day’s plan could be very busy as a result of we’ll solely have information from the primary sol down in time for planning on Monday. At this time I used to be working as a Rover Planner, supporting each arm and drive actions. We begin very first thing with arm actions; we DRT brush and do APXS integration on the goal “San Cristóbal,” which is a bedrock goal, and the one place within the workspace clean and flat sufficient for us to brush.
After a short nap, we now have an intensive imaging marketing campaign. We take Mastcam photos of the AEGIS goal from the earlier plan and two potential vein targets “Rio Satja” and “Río Ichilo.” We then take Mastcam stereo mosaics of boxwork targets “Pontezuelo” and “Catedrales de Tara.” Moreover we now have stereo mosaics of “Llanos de Challe,” a transition between the bedrock within the boxwork hole and the boxwork ridge, a close-by light-toned publicity, and a few further troughs and ridges. ChemCam then takes a LIBS remark of “Airport Domes,” which is one other hole within the boxworks. Lastly, we take a ChemCam RMI and a Mastcam of Pontezuelo.
After ending all of the imaging, we proceed with the remainder of the arm actions. We break up the arm actions to accommodate conflicting constraints — each APXS and ChemCam each should be as early as potential. On this set of arm actions, we start with MAHLI imaging of the 2 targets, San Cristóbal and “Salar de Agua Amara,” which consists of delicate branching buildings seemingly made by groundwater.
After one other quick nap, we do a small adjustment in our place to get one other fascinating piece of bedrock ridge in our workspace. In an effort to strategy it at a great angle, we first drive parallel to the ridge to be lined up with the goal, after which we flip and drive straight to it. Resulting from constraints on how we prefer to park at targets, generally these shorter drives might be extra sophisticated than longer ones — however in the present day it was less complicated. After finishing the drive, we unstow the arm to get a transparent view of our workspace for Monday’s planning in addition to our normal post-drive imaging after which Curiosity goes to sleep for the evening.
The second sol of the plan is a little more leisurely. Round noon, Curiosity will probably be taking some atmospheric observations, together with a Navcam dust-devil survey and a south-facing suprahorizon film, adopted by an AEGIS exercise the place the rover will get to choose targets and observe them herself. Then, early the subsequent morning, Curiosity will get up to take some further atmospheric observations, together with Navcam zenith and suprahorizon films, Navcam line-of-sight towards the crater rim, and a Mastcam photo voltaic tau to measure mud within the environment. Lastly, she’ll get a brief nap earlier than waking as much as begin the subsequent plan.
