Earth planning date: Friday, August 11, 2023

In this weekend's plan, Curiosity is behaving much as you would as you climb a mountain. You pause occasionally to look around at what lies beneath your boots - the reward for your hard work up to that point. You also take time to enjoy the view and turn your gaze uphill to the path ahead - the unknown enticing you forward. To do the former, Curiosity will appreciate the chemistry, mineralogy and texture of two targets in the workspace. “Ntourntourvana” is on beautifully layered bedrock with a vein cutting through it, and “Agridi” is a spindly, almost flower-like, resistant feature poking out of the bedrock. One could say we are stopping to smell the flowers. The latter will be achieved by acquiring multiple mosaics of the terrain of Gediz Vallis Ridge swelling ahead of us (as featured in the above image) and an appreciative look to the east toward “Kukenan” butte. Kukenan once towered above us as we entered “Marker Band Valley,” but our steady climb has brought us high enough to now look edge on at some of its layers. Our weekend drive will travel into the scene above, and after that drive we will once again image the terrain ahead to plot the next steps forward. Both before and after the next leg upward, we will keep a constant eye on the weather, to ensure we stay safe and warm in the chilly Gale winter. Onward and upward!

Earth planning date: Wednesday August 8, 2023

Curiosity continues her steady winter drive through the Kalavryta quadrangle with her sights set on the Gediz Vallis ridge ahead! Behind her, Curiosity leaves evidence of her route as wheel tracks in the sand and dust – a robotic version of footprints on the Martian surface. Interestingly, the gaps in the rover wheels were designed with a pattern that leaves an impression for the letters “J,” “P” and “L” in Morse Code on the soft Martian sand. “JPL” is, of course, an abbreviation for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where Curiosity was designed and built, and the site of her mission operations. Not only is it cool to leave “JPL” temporarily stamped on the terrain (the wheel prints will eventually be erased by wind and sand), these patterned tracks are also a useful driving tool for visually measuring the precise distance between drives. You can read more about Curiosity’s wheel design here.

Today we developed a 2-sol plan where sol 3914 included targeted science, a drive, and post-drive imaging. We investigated the intriguing bedrock at the “Skepasto” target using the DRT, APXS, MAHLI and a multispectral Mastcam image. We also planned a ChemCam LIBS target at the nearby “Anastasi” target to characterize the chemical diversity of the local bedrock, which will be documented by a multispectral Mastcam image. A nearby trough will be characterized by a Mastcam stereo image, and we had enough time and power to schedule a long-distance ChemCam RMI image of Gediz Vallis ridge to document the different types of rocks near the top of the ridge – a view that will be harder to see as we continue driving closer to the ridge itself.

Environmental imaging over this 2-sol plan includes Mastcam basic tau measurements to analyze dust in the atmosphere, a suprahorizon movie for cloud observations, and a dust devil survey.

While Curiosity is quickly approaching the base of the Gediz Vallis ridge, many of us here on Earth are gearing up for a science campaign to understand the nature, origin, and evolution of this ridge and how it fits into the larger Gediz Vallis system within Gale crater – truly exciting times are ahead!

Earth planning date: Monday, August 7th, 2023

I certainly do not remember a birthday cake with eleven candles in front of me. I'm sure it existed, and there's probably even a (physical) photo of it somewhere at my childhood home, but there have been many laps around the sun since then to erode my memories from that time (and, naturally, a significant change in hair albedo if I am completely honest). This past weekend, Curiosity officially completed its 11^th (Earth) year on Mars. As Alex captured in the blog from the weekend plan, our rover was busy conducting exciting science activities as the milestone came and went. Just another hard day at work for the veteran rover. It seems like only yesterday we celebrated 10 (Earth) years on the surface, and not long before that when intense nervousness was fractured by words from engineer Allen Chen I'll never forget: "Touchdown confirmed. We're safe on Mars." I had the privilege of being in the Flight Projects Center at JPL as a wide-eyed graduate student with the rest of the 2012 science team on landing night. I could not imagine the journey we would venture on together over these 11 years that have followed.

Our rover is a little more tired than 11 years ago. That's to be expected though, 3911 diurnal cycles on Mars is grueling. That's 3911 frigid Mars nights, 3911 cool (at best) Mars days, and nearly 100,000 hours of being bombarded by radiation from space after landing on Mars. Add as well some 30+ hard-earned km driven over often-grueling terrain. There have been analyses of samples from 38 drill holes and 6 scoops. Nearly 3,000 commanded APXS analyses on solid samples. Roughly 64,000 MAHLI and nearly 220,000 commanded Mastcam images. In the neighbourhood of 1 million ChemCam LIBS shots and roughly 6,000 ChemCam RMIs as well as countless REMS activities and DAN pulses. CheMin XRD analyses of 43 samples totaling around 1,500 hours of measurement time and a similar workload for SAM. More images from the Hazard and Navigation cameras than I can even imagine counting and a full 11-year solar cycle monitored by RAD. All of these data, and more to come, relayed through Curiosity's friends overhead back to Earth for analysis and interpretation by the science team and community.

Curiosity was gifted a stunning workspace to kick off its 12th (Earth) year on Mars after a successful drive in the previous plan. Our rover took advantage of this workspace with an action-packed two-sol plan, especially so given the various tactical constraints. To start the first plan of its 12th year on Mars, Curiosity brushed the rock target "Ouranoupoli" and acquired an APXS analysis as well as MAHLI and Mastcam images. Mastcam also acquired images of nearby ripples as well as of the targets "Sicyon," "Orinoco," and "Arachova," the latter of which was also investigated by ChemCam. Curiosity also executed a one-hour drive, providing a new workspace for Wednesday's planning day

Every day on Mars is a good day. Some may be more challenging than others, but that's life on Mars. One constant, through everything, is the soul and determination of this rover and its supporting cast, to soldier on, up the flanks of a mountain, inside a 3-4 billion year old crater, on a sparkling red dot low near the western horizon in this late summer's evening sky. Happy birthday Curiosity, you are never truly alone.

Earth planning date: Friday August 4, 2023

We’re planning a special weekend today – Saturday is the 11th (Earth) anniversary of Curiosity’s landing! I was newly graduated from high school when I watched Curiosity touch down, and it still seems surreal sometimes that I get to be part of a mission I followed with such fascination back then.

We have an exciting anniversary (or ‘landiversary’ as it’s sometimes called, a portmanteau of landing anniversary) weekend planned for Curiosity, including hopefully spotting some elusive frost. Unfortunately, Wednesday’s frost observation, which was itself a repeat of last weekend’s attempt, didn’t go ahead as planned. This weekend we’re giving it one more try and hoping that the third time is the charm. The cold, early morning temperatures that allow frost to form also mean that the rover needs lots of extra power to warm up. But even with the tight power, we’re fitting in a lot to this weekend in between some well-deserved naps.

The weekend starts off with Mastcam looking at a rock and sand feature, ‘Mamousia,’ a nearby set of troughs, and the Gediz Vallis Ridge. Then ChemCam will take a look at the nearby ‘Sopoto,’ and join Mastcam at Gediz Vallis Ridge. MAHLI and APXS also get up close on Sopoto and MAHLI is also examining a dark vein in another bedrock, ‘Kolpos Megaron.’

We wake up nice and early for the frost observation which is on an area of soil called ‘Kiato.’ This happens right around sunrise for the best chance of having the perfect conditions for frost. The ChemCam observation is accompanied by a zenith cloud movie to also look for water-ice above. After the daytime part of the frost experiment, as well as a couple of Mastcam observations of Sopoto and Kiato, it’s time to drive away.

Curiosity gets to kick back and take it easy for the rest of its anniversary weekend, only waking up shortly before the end of the plan for some morning ENV activities. Even though we’ve been focusing on the frost experiments, we’re in the middle of the cloudy season on Mars and happy to take any opportunity to watch the clouds around Gale Crater. We have three of our cloud observations, the zenith and suprahorizon movies, which look straight overhead and towards the horizon respectively, and a 360 degree sky survey, which captures most of the sky around the rover.

Earth planning date: Wednesday, August 2, 2023

We don’t have a lot of power to play with today, so we have to be careful about how much time we give the different activities. As Arm Rover Planner, I got to sequence the contact science activities today.

We start this two-sol plan with a nap to save up power. After waking up in the afternoon, we do a short block of imaging. Mastcam is taking three stereo mosaics. The first is a 4-frame mosaic of the Mt. Sharp foothills, specifically looking at an eroded area to see the layer orientations. The second is a target “Zagori,” which is a nearby field. Of large sand ripples. The third is of the nearby little craters. There is also an extension mosaic of the workspace; there is a pit in the workspace and science wants to determine if it is another small crater from the Jau cluster. Next, ChemCam takes an LIBS mosaic of the target “Valimi,” which is a nodular rock.

After the imaging, we turn to contact science; our workspace is in the image. The contact science targets were a little tricky to assess. The DRT target, “Samaria,” is on a rock that looks rather rough in the images. Fortunately our tools showed that the roughness was not as bad as it looked and we were able to proceed with brushing the target, as well as performing MAHLI and APXS. We couldn’t quite get to the 1-cm close approach due to that slight roughness, but we were able to get to 1.5 cm which was acceptable for science. The other target, “Kythira,” was a vein target. This was a little challenging because the vein was protruding up above the rest of the rock surface. Fortunately, the geometry of the vein (being quite long) ensured that the APXS contact would be safe and nothing could stick up into the instrument and again we were able to proceed with MAHLI and APXS. The uncertainty of arm placements, however, may mean that we don’t end up exactly centered on the vein – we will have to wait and see! The geometry of this target allowed us to get to 1cm with MAHLI for that extra image resolution. We did two sets of short APXS integrations (moving the arm in between) before stowing the arm for the night to be ready to drive in the morning.

Around 5:30 the next morning, we make another attempt to find frost In the cold winter Martian morning. Curiosity is near the equator, and we just barely meet the conditions required to produce frost, so it will be scientifically interesting if we find it! Activities at this time of day require a lot of heating to keep the instruments safe – this is why we are tight on power today. ChemCam is taking LIBS observations of “Filia,” a soil target. Soil gets colder than rock at night, so this is an ideal place to look for frost. In conjunction, we also use REMS to get the relative humidity and temperature, and we take a Navcam zenith movie to look at the weather conditions and clouds.

After a nap, Curiosity is waking up for the second part of the frost experiment on Filia and some other science. We also take a ChemCam passive sky observation which can measure the water vapor in the atmosphere. Mastcam takes a documentation image of Filia as well as Valimi, and then multispectral images of the Samaria DRT target and the Zagoria dune field to assess dust coverage.

After another short nap, it is time to drive. The terrain has been slightly improving over the last few drives. It is still rocky and sandy but the rocks and sand patches are smaller and less threatening. They do create a lot of holes in our stereo coverage, however, which makes it harder to drive long distances and we sometimes need to drive around. There are also a couple of ripples that we decided to avoid. The last challenge is that the rover is tilted left during most of the drive which means the rover is going to tend to slip to the side. We have to sequence checkpoints along the way to make sure we stay on the planned route. We’re driving only a total of about 20m today, but as we are power tight, that’s about all we had time for anyway. After the drive, we take a standard set of post-drive imaging, including drive direction, workspace, clast survey, and twilight MARDI.

Earth planning date: Tuesday, August 1, 2023

Today we wrapped a single-sol plan for sol 3906. Our planning for this sol was primarily constrained by power. We had attempted to conduct a frost experiment over the weekend which failed, and so we are striving to save power to be able to attempt the experiment again on Wednesday’s plan. The blog post for that weekend’s plan gives an excellent description of the experiment, but in summary, we are searching for the presence of water frost on the Martian surface. We attempt this experiment every Martian winter by taking ChemCam measurements of the soil at dawn when the ground is coldest, then taking measurements of the same spot later in the day to see any spectral differences. The hope is that we could detect any water vapor in the atmosphere that deposited overnight under the cold winter conditions.

Besides power conservation, our goal for this sol’s plan was to make as much driving progress as possible. Our expected drive distance is under 15 meters which is reasonable for us in this very rocky terrain, but our power constraints also contribute to not making it a longer drive. The image I’ve included today gives you a good perspective on the up-close of what Curiosity has to deal with on Mars. Those poor wheels are taking a lot of damage from all the rocks and sharp edges they have to come into contact with! That’s why rover drivers spend so much time carefully navigating the terrain, minimizing the amount of wear on the wheels. Besides the drive, we also are planning a contact event on our “Kefalonia” representative target with some DRT brushing and Mastcam inspection. We will also take some Mastcam imaging for stereo documentation of different fractured stones and rocks, in addition to Jau crater inspection. Mastcam will additionally perform some atmospheric observations to measure optical depth and study aerosol scattering properties.

After our drive (the part of our plan which we call the “mobility backbone”), we will take some Navcam cloud altitude observations to search for clouds and determine wind direction near the zenith (directly overhead above the rover). We will also use Mastcam to take “PDI” (“post drive imaging”) which will be a systematic observation of clasts and soils along our traverse path. Stay tuned in future mission updates to see if we were successful for our next attempt at the yearly frost campaign experiments!

Earth planning date: Monday, July 31, 2023

It’s currently wintertime at Gale Crater and temperatures are cold this time of the year. Power is therefore more limited for Curiosity, so science activities and drives are more constrained as we head into planning this week. The ChemCam frost experiment from the previous plan did not execute as hoped due to an issue with heating the rover’s mast. Fortunately, a second opportunity for these experiments may come later this week! Today, we have planned a single sol with contact science, remote sensing, and a drive.

Curiosity will start off the morning on Sol 3905 with an APXS touch-and-go observation of target “Novo Paraiso” (a junction of polygonal fractures on a flat block of bedrock in the rover’s workspace) along with MAHLI imaging of the same target. Often, the Dust Removal Tool (DRT) is used to clear the bedrock before an APXS observation, but due to limited power during the Martian winter, utilization of the DRT was not an option in this plan.

Our remote sensing activities include a Mastcam multispectral observation of a dark-toned piece of float rock named “Pico Phelps,” followed by a ChemCam LIBS raster to investigate bedrock target “Peruano.” ChemCam will then take a long-distance RMI of Gediz Vallis Ridge and Mastcam will document the LIBS target “Peruano.” Curiosity will then drive on towards Gediz Vallis Ridge, acquire standard imagery of the surrounding terrain, and execute a Navcam sky observation upon reaching its new location. Over the coming weeks, Curiosity will be journeying to upper Gediz Vallis Ridge to investigate new surface materials there.

Earth planning date: Friday, July 28, 2023

Our Thursday drive on sol 3901 was successful and put us ~30 meters further from Bradbury Landing! That's a pretty typical-length drive for us, with the longest I've seen in my 3 years on this mission being ~100 meters or so. We've had a good luck streak recently - being able to get arm, remote sensing, and drives in all week! The only tight constraint we've been working with is our battery/state-of-charge situation, a puzzle that gets harder with each Martian winter when we need to use the heaters more (Ken so expertly described this in Wednesday’s blog!).

Planning activities outside the most temperate parts of the sol (our “no-heat-windows” of time) take more power since we need to turn on the heaters and wake the rover up. Even with our power puzzle situation, the team focused on prioritizing an environmental ChemCam “frost detection campaign” - requiring ChemCam to shoot their laser before the sun starts to heat things up (even though the highest temperature in Gale right now is around -20 deg Celsius, aka -4 deg Fahrenheit). This type of experiment has been repeated year after year in the dead of Gale’s winter and continues to help us better understand the distribution of enhanced hydrogen (aka “frost”) that may accumulate on the surface during the night. In addition to the pre-dawn experiment, ChemCam needs to repeat the laser shots mid-sol afterwards for spectrum comparison. So now that the crater cluster imaging campaign is largely wrapped up, the team scaled down our usual double-target weekend contact science to accommodate this exciting experiment.

Sol 3902 kicks off with a mid-sol remote sensing block, including: a long-distance Mastcam mosaic of the inverted channel in the distance, ChemCam LIBS targeting a bedrock spot named “Aratai Creek,” Mastcam documentation of the Aratai Creek LIBS spots, and a couple small Mastcam mosaics of interesting terrain surrounding us. Our main arm backbone occurs shortly afterwards, with DRT brushing followed by APXS and MAHLI on the flat slab in our workspace named “Jamari.” APXS will be left on top of Jamari for a 3-hour evening integration, and we pretty much call it a night afterwards - stowing the arm and waking the rover back up ~10am on the second sol. A mid-sol remote sensing block will start off sol 3903 activities, including: a Mastcam multispectral of the previously DRT-ed “Jamari” spot and a mosaic of a crater to the north, ChemCam LIBS of another bedrock spot named “Tigre Creek”, and Mastcam documentation of the Tigre Creek LIBS spots. The rover will take a long nap until evening, when APXS wakes us back up to start an atmospheric integration with the arm stowed. The third sol is when the pre-dawn ChemCam frost campaign will kick off at ~5:30am, with the mid-sol experiment happening ~10:15am afterwards. Mastcam will document both experiments’ LIBS shots afterwards and end this plan’s remote sensing activities with some images near the sun to measure atmospheric opacity. In the afternoon of sol 3904 we’ll start driving southeastwards for (hopefully) about 18 meters, take some post-drive images of our new location, and wrap up this plan with a MARDI terrain image in the blue-ish twilight of Martian sunset.

Earth planning date: Wednesday July 26, 2023

As in many recent MSL plans, power limited what we could fit into today's 2-sol plan. Why is power so limited? As expected, MSL's plutonium power source continues to slowly decay, so it takes longer to recharge the batteries than it used to. But the engineering team has done a great job over the years finding ways to conserve power, and the power limitations are therefore not as severe as they were expected to be. The fact that it’s winter at Gale crater right now also doesn’t help – we need to run our heaters a lot longer in the winter, and that means using a lot more power.
The rover will still be very busy, using its remote sensing and arm instruments and driving on the second sol.

The plan for Sol 3900 starts with Navcam and Mastcam measurements of dust in the atmosphere and a Mastcam mosaic of a nearby crater. Then ChemCam will shoot its laser at a rock named "Curini River" and the Right Mastcam will document the resulting laser pits. After a mid-afternoon nap to recharge the batteries, the arm will be deployed to brush the dust off a rock target named "Porta Walter" (just above center in the above image) and take MAHLI images of the cleaned spot. MAHLI will also image a thin outcrop named "Purace" before the APXS is placed on it for an evening integration. The APXS will then be moved to the Porta Walter brushed spot for another evening integration.

On Sol 3901, Navcam will search for dust devils and Mastcam will acquire a multispectral observation of the brushed spot. ChemCam then gets busy, with a LIBS measurement of elemental chemistry on "Crique Tino," near Purace. Right Mastcam will document the laser pits on Crique Tino before the rover drives toward the southeast. After the drive and the post-drive imaging needed for planning on Friday, MARDI will take another twilight image and SAM will perform and engineering baseline test overnight.

I'm planning to retire at the end of this week, so today was probably the last time I will be scheduled to help with MAHLI/MARDI uplink planning. It has been a bittersweet day, as I have really enjoyed MSL mission operations since landing and will miss being heavily engaged with the many expert scientists and engineers on the project. I have been very fortunate to be able to work with such capable, bright people over the years, and look forward to following along as the exploration of Aeolis Mons (Mt. Sharp) continues. Go MSL!

Earth planning date: Tuesday July 25, 2023

The rover engineers yet again did a fantastic job navigating Curiosity through this tricky terrain of fractured blocks and sand. Our parking spot is on the rim of one of the larger craters within a cluster of craters that we have been driving towards for the last few weeks. A number of people on our science team advocated for visiting these craters to learn more about the cratering process on Mars. They are interested in variations in shape and morphology of the craters, the amount of degredation and erosion, and the composition of any impactor material (if present). Sadly, there were no obvious meteorites in our workspace and this plan focused on capturing the view of the craters and surrounding terrain. We are taking a 360° Mastcam mosaic, as well as smaller, higher resolution mosaics of the two largest craters within the cluster.

Despite the significant time and power resources required to accomplish the imaging, we were still able to squeeze in some chemical analyses and close-up imaging of the rocks within the crater rim. ChemCam will analyze the laminated bedrock target, “Aire de Repos,” which will also be documented with Mastcam. APXS will acquire compositional data on the dark, vertical face of an upturned block (“Guainia”), and MAHLI will take close-up images of this target and a differentially eroded, laminated bedrock fragment, “Mocambo.” To continue monitoring changes in the atmosphere, we will also acquire a Navcam large dust devil survey and line of sight, single frame image.

Once we have completed all our targeted science observations, Curiosity will hopefully execute another successful drive to take us towards our next area of interest at the base of the Gediz Vallis ridge (stay tuned to hear more about this interesting feature as we get closer). Once the drive has executed, we will take images of the new terrain beneath the rover with MARDI. Standard REMS, DAN and RAD activities round out this plan.