Sol 1286-88, March 18, 2016, update from USGS scientist Lauren Edgar: St. Patrick’s Day on Mars didn’t quite go as planned. Yesterday we planned a ~15 m drive to a nearby ridge, but we came in this morning to find that the drive didn’t occur (blame it on the leprechauns?). In reality, we can blame it on a short in the RTG, which precluded the drive. This fault has occurred several times previously. Because the fault is understood, we were able to proceed with the weekend plan from our current location.
The first sol of the weekend plan is devoted to targeted remote sensing. We’ll start with some environmental monitoring observations to assess atmospheric opacity and composition. Then we’ll acquire ChemCam and Mastcam observations on the targets “Sesriem Canyon,” “Omaheke,” and “Varianto” to assess variations in… [More at link]