Written by Conor Hayes, Graduate Pupil at York College
Earth planning date: Wednesday, June 4, 2025
We’re persevering with to search for an appropriate location to gather a drilled pattern on this space. As you could recall from Monday’s plan, we carried out a brief “bump” of slightly below 4 meters (about 13 ft) hoping to discover a drill goal at the moment after Monday’s evaluation decided that there have been no good targets in our earlier workspace. Fortunately, at the moment’s workspace was rather more cooperative, and we had been in a position to choose the goal “Altadena” as our subsequent potential drill location. Altadena is a reputation that we have been saving for a particular goal, as its namesake right here on Earth is a neighborhood subsequent to JPL that was devastated by the Eaton Hearth earlier this 12 months. We’re about to enter our subsequent mapping quadrangle, which can include a brand new set of goal names, so the group determined that utilizing Altadena because the title for this drill web site was an apparent selection.
The large exercise on this plan is the following step within the drilling course of. This exercise is the “preload take a look at,” which determines if the forces on the drill will probably be good whereas drilling, and the drill goal received’t unexpectedly transfer or fracture. If we move the preload take a look at and discover that the rock has the chemistry we’re on the lookout for, we’ll be capable to proceed with Altadena as our subsequent drill web site. If we do not, we’ll should resolve whether or not to bump once more or resume driving deeper into this doubtlessly boxwork-bearing area.
In fact, the preload take a look at is not the one factor we’re doing at the moment. Coming in, it was trying like our time for different actions could be fairly tight as a result of energy constraints imposed by preparations for drilling and preserving the rover heat throughout the chilly Martian winter. Nevertheless, we have just lately applied some new power-optimizing capabilities, which led to us having rather more energy at the moment than we anticipated. This meant that we had been ready so as to add a complete further hour of science time along with the hour that we already had scheduled.
Unsurprisingly, Altadena will get loads of love on this plan to characterize it earlier than we drill. This features a ChemCam LIBS exercise and a Mastcam remark, in addition to some in a single day observations by APXS and a few MAHLI photographs. As well as, Mastcam will probably be observing some uncovered stratigraphy at “Dana Level,” a light-toned vein at “Mission Trails” that may even be a ChemCam LIBS goal, a couple of extra close by troughs, and a few sandy patches at “Camp Williams” to look at wind-driven sediment transport. Together with the 2 LIBS, ChemCam will probably be utilizing its RMI digital camera so as to add to the pile of photographs we’ve got of the Mishe Mokwa butte and the yardang unit off within the distance.
Because the lead for the Ambiance and Atmosphere (ENV) group at the moment, it appeared like I used to be going to have a reasonably gentle workload as a result of energy constraints stopping any ENV actions apart from our common REMS, RAD, and DAN observations. With the additional hour of science time, I used to be ready so as to add a handful of recent actions, together with three Navcam cloud motion pictures, a Navcam line-of-sight remark of mud inside Gale Crater, and a Navcam survey to search for any mud devils which may be swirling across the rover. A reasonably respectable ENV science haul for a plan that began with nothing!
After we come into planning on Friday, we’ll hopefully have handed the preload take a look at and can be capable to flip Altadena into our forty third drill gap within the coming sols, earlier than we proceed driving up the slopes of Mount Sharp.
