Over the weekend, Curiosity took compositional measurements of the "Canaima" bedrock target in order to determine if the target merits collecting drilled sample. Concurrently, the engineering team took preload measurements to determine the stability of the rock for drilling. This morning the science and engineering teams reviewed the information downlinked and were excited to approve moving forward with drilling Canaima.

For today's plan, the rover planners carefully sequenced the motions the rover's arm and turret will make to drill to approximately 35 mm depth, creating a ~1.6 cm diameter hole (a little less than the diameter of a US dime). This seemingly small volume of drilled sample will be enough to ingest in our internal analytical laboratories to identify mineralogy with CheMin and search for organics with SAM later this week, should the team choose to!

These future measurements with CheMin and SAM are very power intensive. Even though we are not certain we will perform them, today's team was careful to conserve power in the event that we will. We therefore limited today's plan to drilling activities and our regular environmental monitoring measurements and extra imaging to monitor for changes in dust levels in our atmosphere.

Looking forward to waking up tomorrow morning to our 36th drill hole!

Sols 3609-3611: Preparing to Make Our Mark!
The science team has been carefully considering where it will collect its next drilled sample. Like taste-testing ice cream flavors before committing to just the right scoop, the science team first uses ChemCam and APXS to assess the composition of the bedrock. We have been analyzing several areas in the "marker band valley," and this current rock in front of us shows promise as a potential drill target.

We've imaged this block now with Mastcam and MAHLI (see image above), and used ChemCam to get an initial look at the composition with LIBS. However, because of the tricky terrain and how it affects the rover's stability, we've been unable to brush the surface with our dust removal tool or use APXS to analyze for more compositional data. Finally, after several sols of repositioning ourselves, Curiosity is now ready to unstow its arm, brush aside the pesky dust, and measure the composition with APXS.

We've chosen the target "Canaima," named for Canaima National Park in Venezuela which contains spectacular million-year-old, table-top mountains and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Though the science team has not yet committed to drilling Canaima, we have decided to be as efficient as possible and today's plan will include all the scientific and engineering measurements needed so that we'll be ready to forge ahead with a drill next week, if desired. This will involve a preload test, which will provide a sense of the stability of the rock, as well as the science observations.

The observations thus far of this rock, like the above MAHLI image, are quite lovely. I particularly like how the layering is expressed on this rock. They are so delicately thin with more resistant nodules poking out - in what setting were they deposited and what kind of alteration have they been through since??

In addition to our contact science today, we continue to image landmarks around marker band valley and in our workspace using Mastcam and ChemCam. We also continue with our regular cadence of environmental monitoring measurements, including those that look for changes in dust abundance in our atmosphere.

Looking forward to Curiosity having a productive weekend!

A Broken Rock Won't Break Our Team
by Eleanor Moreland, Ph.D. Student at Rice University
Last week, Perseverance attempted an abrasion on the Chiniak target at Enchanted Lake. Scientists and engineers worked together to plan this activity on an intriguing target of potentially fine-grained rocks at the base of the Jezero delta. But, when the images came down on sol 564 (September 21st), the once coherent rock target was broken, precluding any further proximity science or sampling on or near the target.

While working on operations, I have experienced what it's like when significant effort is required to plan an activity, only for the plan to be thwarted by the unexpected response of Mars' surface. Something I quickly noticed, however, is how these perceived setbacks do not dampen the spirits of the operators. In this way, the Mars 2020 team truly encapsulates the rover's name "Perseverance."

As soon as the team learned that the Chiniak abrasion attempt was unsuccessful, the scientists and engineers immediately worked to select an alternate abrasion target for the upcoming sols, in addition to investigating what information could be extracted from the broken rock surface. While we had to forgo abrasion proximity science on this target, we gained information about the cohesiveness and strength of the rock and had the opportunity to observe and compare both freshly broken and weathered rock surfaces. Thanks to the quick work of the science and engineers, a new target was selected for a successful abrasion just a couple of days later.

As an early career scientist that has worked on the team for about a year now, the Mars 2020 team's internal perseverance has been an inspiration in my own life. In the science world, unsuccessful experiments can often be seen as failures. The work of the Mars 2020 Science Team has taught me how to view these scenarios as a learning opportunity, regain momentum towards a new goal, and never lose sight of the bigger picture.

Related Links
Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory
Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com
Lunar Dreams and more

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Sols 3599-3600: A Stay and Play Kind of Day
Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 22, 2022
Coming into planning, we were ready for a standard "Touch and Go" plan, where we do some early morning science and then drive onto our next location. However, our workspace had some really great bedrock within arm reach, so we decided to convert the plan into a "Stay and Play" type of plan instead and spend more time characterizing the rocks here. On the first sol of the plan, APXS and MAHLI will analyze the large nodules in the bedrock at the target "Nova Cintra" and a raised ridge feature at "Pi ... read more