2 Likes
NASA's Mars Exploration Program (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Sol 1903: Swinging by the sandbox
The images for panorama obtained by the rover's 34-millimeter Mast Camera. The mosaic, which stretches about 30,000 pixels width, includes 121 images taken on Sol 1903 (December 12, 2017).
The majority of the time on the "Vera Rubin Ridge," Curiosity focuses on the rocks that make up the ridge, measuring their chemistry and imaging their structure to try and understand the origin of this prominent feature in Gale crater. Today, however, sand was the focus of Curiosity's attention. Small depressions gather sand as the wind blows along the ridge, and the team wanted to measure the chemistry and grain size of such a Vera Rubin Ridge sand deposit to understand their similarities (or differences) to those of the Bagnold dune sands. MAHLI and APXS were deployed on two targets, "Goatfell" and "Eilean Dubh." The former is along the crest of a sand ripple, and the latter avoids ripple crests to provide the largest contrast to Goatfell. ChemCam will raster across another ripple crest at "Stonehaven," and Mastcam will acquire a multispectral observation at "Corrie" that covers the ripple crests targeted by ChemCam, MAHLI and APXS.
The Vera Rubin Ridge rocks did not go without attention despite the comprehensive sand observations. ChemCam will measure bedrock chemistry at "Arran," and the chemistry of one of the gray cobbles scattered throughout the workspace at "Trotternish." Targets "Coll" and "Yell" mark a contact between two different rock types on the ridge; Mastcam mosaics across these targets will provide detailed insight into the nature of the contact. Mastcam will also image "Hoy," a small, bumpy rock that shares similarities with the target "Moffat" imaged at our last stop. All of the plan's targets will be recorded for posterity in one of our systematic Mastcam 360 degree mosaics, including Curiosity's drive target, a stretch of bedrock ~5 m away with unique color characteristics as viewed from orbit.
Environmental observations include dust measurements at three different times of day, early morning searches for clouds looking above the rover and across the horizon, DAN passive and active measurements spaced throughout the plan, and regular REMS and RAD measurements.
Michelle Minitti
Planetary Geologist at Framework
Other panoramas of Mars by Curiosity rover:
...
The planet Earth has proven to be too limiting for our awesome community of panorama photographers. We're getting an increasing number of submissions that depict locations either not on Earth (like Mars, the Moon, and Outer Space in general) or do not realistically represent a geographic location on Earth (either because they have too many special effects or are computer generated) and hence don't strictly qualify for our Panoramic World project.But many of these panoramas are extremely beautiful or popular of both.So, in order to accommodate our esteemed photographers and the huge audience that they attract to 360Cities with their panoramas, we've created a new section (we call it an "area") called "Out of this World" for panoramas like these.Don't let the fact that these panoramas are being placed at the Earth's South Pole fool you - we had to put them somewhere in order not to interfere with our Panoramic World.Welcome aboard on a journey "Out of this World".
