Sols 3378-3380: Leaving the Prow in Our Rearview Mirror

We’ll be checking off the last item on our “Prow vicinity investigation” to-do list today with MAHLI and APXS observations on two bedrock targets named “Aji” and “Erico,” as well as ChemCam observations on a tilted block named “Cucurital” and bedrock target named “Rockstone.” We’re also collecting a lot of images at this location, with five planned Mastcam mosaics consisting of 494 individual frames between them, a 5x1 ChemCam RMI mosaic, and Mastcam context images of the Cucurital and Rockstone ChemCam targets. Not enough imaging for you? We’ll snap even more Mastcam photos after our drive, with a 180 degree mosaic (that’s an additional 55 Mastcam frames for those keeping score at home) on top of our standard suite of post-drive images. The weekend plan rounds out with some observations to monitor the environment around the rover, including a ChemCam passive sky observation on the third sol of the plan that will measure the composition of gases in the atmosphere.

Now that we’ve wrapped up our activities in this area, the drive we planned today is sending us several meters north, back the way we came. We are aiming for a passageway that will allow us to ascend back onto the Greenheugh pediment. Once we climb up, we’ll leave the Mt. Sharp group rocks behind for a while and get to explore the very different period of Mars’ history that is preserved in the Greenheugh pediment and superposed Gediz Vallis ridge.