Written by Natalie Moore, Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Area Science Programs
Earth planning date: Wednesday, April 9, 2025
Our drive from Monday’s plan was largely profitable, placing us ~22 meters down the “highway” out of an anticipated 30 meters. A steering command halted the drive slightly brief once we tried to turn-in-place however as a substitute was a rock, which additionally had the impact of creating our place too unstable for arm actions. Oh properly! APXS information has been displaying the latest terrain as being fairly related in composition, so the crew isn’t complaining about attempting once more after one other drive. Plus, preserving the arm stowed ought to give us slightly extra energy to play with within the coming sols (an ongoing battle this Martian winter).
Not too long ago, my job on Mastcam has been to ensure our science imaging is as concurrent as potential with required rover actions. This technique helps save rover awake time, AKA energy consumption. At present we did a fairly good job with this, solely rising the overall awake time by ~2 minutes regardless that we deliberate 52 photographs! Our imaging at the moment included a mosaic of the “Satan’s Gate” ridge together with some nodular bedrock and distant “Torote Bowl,” a mosaic of a close-by vein community named “Moonstone Seashore,” and a number of other sandy troughs surrounding the bedrock blocks we see right here.
ChemCam is planning a LIBS raster on a vertical vein in our workspace named “Jackrabbit Flat,” and a distant RMI mosaic of “Condor Peak” (a butte to the north we’re dropping view of). Our drive will occur within the 1400 hour on the primary sol, hopefully touchdown us efficiently 53 meters additional into this new valley on our solution to the boxwork constructions to the west! Submit-drive, we’re together with a take a look at of a “Submit Traverse Autonav Terrain Commentary” AKA PoTATO – a simple drop-in exercise for floor evaluation of a rover-built navigation map of our new terrain. Plus we get to say PoTATO so much.
