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NASA's Mars Exploration Program (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Sol 2789: Pot of Gold?
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 2789 (June 10, 2020).
Our discussions during the start of planning this morning centred around: 1) Where to drive in order to maximize the view out of the front window to make planning the next drive easier, as well as trying to place Curiosity in a position where we will be able to image an interesting feature that from orbit, appears as though it may be a landslide that originated from the edge of the pediment cliff to the north; and 2) Which of the features in our immediate workspace to analyze with ChemCam? Bedrock, diagenetic features, pebbles or veins? The rover planner engineers managed to plan a drive that satisfied both mobility goals, and after much deliberation, the science team decided to use ChemCam to investigate the chemistry of the bedrock and a pebble in the workspace, all in one observation (“Outer_Golden_Pot”). The LIBS raster will transition from bedrock onto a dark grey pebble. I had noticed some blocks with interesting dark-coloured coatings in our drive direction imaging last Friday, and once such block ended up just off to the right of the rover today. Although we will not get chemistry on this block (“Dunkeld”), Mastcam will image the block, and lighter-coloured veins and fractured rock around it to get a higher-resolution look. Mastcam will also capture the ChemCam target in more detail, as well as mosaics of the possible landslide feature (“Munlochy”), the pediment cliff off to the right (north) of the rover, and a 15 x 8 frame, 360° mosaic. The environmental science group planned a suite of activities including three large Navcam dust devil surveys, a Navcam dust devil movie, and Navcam deck monitoring. The standard REMS, DAN passive and RAD activities are also included. A SAM Electrical Baseline Test (EBT) designed to monitor SAM’s electrical functions will execute during the overnight of the first sol of this plan. As the APXS Payload Uplink/Downlink Lead today, it was a quiet planning day for me, with no contact science. However, I did analyze the data downlinked from our weekend observations looking at the typical bedrock chemistry (“Heather Island”) and helped identify the “Dunkeld” target. It is always a thrill to see the new view after a drive, and today did not disappoint.
Written by Lucy Thompson
Other panoramas of Mars by Curiosity rover:
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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".
