Sols 3403-3404: Tiptoe to the Pediment

The terrain continues to challenge us as we make our way up onto the Greenheugh pediment. Monday’s drive ended sooner than expected when the rover sensed the road was rockier than anticipated, so it paused to wait for further instructions from Earth. In the mean time, we took advantage of this brief pause to 'sniff' the rock field all around us. First, we took ChemCam and Mastcam of "Tobar Mhoire" and "Ardalanish," both points on a gray-toned rock with laminations. Farther afield, the rover will capture large ChemCam RMI (10 images) and Mastcam (18 images) mosaics of "Helmsdale Fault" capturing the pediment edge. In addition, there will be a massive (58 images!) Mastcam mosaic centered about "Feorachas," a remnant monolith in a field of various sedimentary structures. Finally, the rover will look to the north and capture "Torflundie Mire," one of several scoured areas across the pediment, in a 11 image Mastcam stereo mosaic. Other standard imaging includes a Mastcam 360 for documenting the surrounding area, clast survey, and solar tau to measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere, as well as Navcam sky flats, line-of-sight to again look at the atmosphere in a different way, and a dust devil movie.