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Curiosity is advancing westward through a largely boulder-strewn channel that is leading us toward the Greenheugh Pediment. The Pediment is where our rover will spend the next many months, as we turn back uphill to the south and continue our ascent up Mt. Sharp. Despite it being quite craggy in our current location, we did have to drive over a large sand patch to get to our current parking locat Curiosity is advancing westward through a largely boulder-strewn channel that is leading us toward the Greenheugh Pediment. The Pediment is where our rover will spend the next many months, as we turn back uphill to the south and continue our ascent up Mt. Sharp. Despite it being quite craggy in our current location, we did have to drive over a large sand patch to get to our current parking location!
Today's objective was to study one of the last remaining bedrock patches available to us before we ascend onto the Pediment in the days ahead. We quickly identified "Loch Coruisk" as our preferred bedrock slab for contact science with MAHLI and APXS. ChemCam will then zap it with LIBS in addition to two other bedrock pieces nearby.
Both ChemCam and Mastcam will also be imaging the edge of the Pediment to our southwest and northwest so we can study the geologic contact that the edge represents. That imaging includes a Mastcam 360 degree mosaic, which will surely be spectacular! As we're quickly approaching the dust storm season on Mars, we also added several dust devil movies with Navcam and observations to monitor the dust amounts in the atmosphere above us and within Gale Crater itself.
Related Links
Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory
Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com
Lunar Dreams and more
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Valentine's Day on Mars as Curiosity marks Sol 3387
Pasadena CA (JPL) Feb 15, 2022
Our Curious robotic explorer is spending another Valentine's Day in faraway Gale crater, Mars. For the first time since 2019, Curiosity has a NASA-built MRV (Martian Rover Valentine)! Although Perseverance and Curiosity won't be able to visit each other, they will certainly be sending love over the red horizons. On this Valentine's Day, Curiosity is planning a full workload with ChemCam LIBS and APXS of 'Loch Garten' followed by MAHLI images of this target before and after dust removal. In additio ... read more