Sol 1677, April 24, 2017, update by MSL scientist Abigail Fraeman: This morning we woke up to fresh images from Curiosity that showed our surroundings after an ~17 m Sunday afternoon drive. I always really enjoy days like this because, even after 1,676 sols and just under 16.1 kilometers of driving, it still thrills me to look at images from unexplored areas of Mars. Immediately after inspecting the data, the science team jumped into planning by debating whether we wanted to spend the morning of Sol 1677 doing remote sensing, or if we wanted to spend the time doing contact science with the arm, all before an early afternoon drive continuing up Mt. Sharp.
A big part of the science team strategy for exploring the Murray formation, the group of rocks that are the lowest and oldest in Mt. Sharp, has been to systematically characterize their changing chemistry and mineralogy. Understanding how these properties vary with elevation gives us insight into changing conditions in the geologic processes that deposited… [More at link]