Earth planning date: Friday, Feb. 14, 2025
Curiosity is making steady progress on its strategic path. The team celebrated a successful drive this morning and we’re already brainstorming our next steps. With a holiday in the U.S. on Monday, we planned four sols instead of the usual three, so we’ll pick up planning again on Tuesday.
On the first sol, we’ll focus on remote sensing. We’ll take some small Mastcam mosaics of the area around the rover. One target that excites me is a sharply pointed rock on the left side of the Navcam image. We’ll capture its color details, which can tell us more about its texture and the geological processes that formed it. This pyramid-shaped rock has been aptly named “Pyramid Lake,” inspired by a human-made lake near Los Angeles that features a similar pyramid-shaped hill.
The second sol will involve using Curiosity’s arm instruments to gather data from different rock targets right at our feet. We’ll examine “Strawberry Peak,” a bumpy bedrock, “Lake Arrowhead,” a smooth bedrock, and “Skyline Trail,” a dark float rock. Our ChemCam will analyze the chemical composition of Skyline Trail, “Big Tujunga” (which resembles Strawberry Peak), and “Momyer.” We’ll also start a 360-degree color mosaic with Mastcam.
On the third sol, we’ll finish the 360-degree mosaic and continue our southwest drive along the route. The fourth sol will be quieter, filled with atmospheric observations and a ChemCam AEGIS task. We’re particularly keen on studying the clouds above Gale Crater this time of year.
I’m excited for the long weekend and can’t wait to return on Tuesday to see the progress Curiosity has made!
Written by Abigail Fraeman, Planetary Geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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