Sol 3681: The Sequel Continues!

This morning’s sol 3681 planning started 2.5 hours later than usual due to orbiter timing, which gave all of us plenty of time to wait impatiently for the resulting data of our second drill attempt at “Amapari2" to radiate from Mars at ~10am PST. The drama started right away as the data arrived ~20min after we had expected and our whole day depended on the drilling outcome. Finally, we saw it: our arm, and most importantly our drill, were still on the ground (see cover image)! Our chatting platform was abuzz with what that meant: our second attempt to drill the Marker Band at Amapari did not complete as planned due to a loss of pressure under the drill (perhaps because the drill reached a void), and we had some on-the-fly planning to do.

While the engineering team combed through the data to figure out next steps for the arm, the science team came up with a few options for what we could plan on sol 3681. Days like this can be challenging for the uplink team since the amount of time, power, and daylight for activities are up-in-the-air until the recovery activities are figured out. However, thanks to the hard work of our engineers and project team members, the plan was pretty much set by ~1:30pm PST which allowed the uplink team to proceed without further delays.

The good news about the arm on the ground is that our mast instruments were free to target images wherever else in the landscape they desired. So before doing anything with the arm this plan, the science team planned a midday remote science block including ChemCam, Mastcam, and Navcam activities of the martian landscape. ChemCam will start us off with five laser shots on bedrock target “Koropicai” off to starboard of the arm and a remote-micro-image (RMI) mosaic of a distant ridge we’ve been calling the “inverted channel.” Mastcam will take over after ChemCam with a documenting color image of the fried Koropicai target and ~100 stereo frames of the landscape to help complete coverage while we’re still in this location (reminder: we’ve been sitting in the same spot since 3672 - that’s a lot of time for Mastcam!). Finally, Navcam will point generally south for a 30min movie to hopefully catch some dust devils on the horizon.

After we get some remote science in, the arm will attempt to retract off the ground (taking lots of documentation images while doing so) and move into the intended overnight pose off to port for sols 3682-3683 planning tomorrow. While the Amapari2 drill attempt did not get to full sample depth, there’s reason to hope we may still have some sample to analyze in the drill stem. If all goes well with this plan, the team may decide to deliver whatever sample was collected to CheMin and proceed down our usual drill sol path! Stay tuned, the story of the Amapari drill site will continue evolving tomorrow.