Sol 1705-06, May 22, 2017, update by MSL scientist Abigail Fraeman: Curiosity is continuing to make progress towards Vera Rubin Ridge along the Mt Sharp ascent route. We planned two sols today, Sol 1705 and Sol 1706. On our first sol, we will kick off the day with some remote sensing science on the bedrock in front of us, including ChemCam observations of targets “Turtle Island”, “Stony Brook”, and “Dike Peak”. Turtle Island is typical Murray bedrock, Stony Brook has an interesting dark streak running through it, and Dike Peak is a neat looking block with dark colored fracture fills. We will complement these observations with Mastcam documentation imaging. We’ll then go for a short drive and take some post drive imaging and a ChemCam AEGIS observation. On the second sol of the plan, Curiosity will be focused on taking atmospheric observations, including a dust devil search and images of the crater rim and sky above us.
We didn’t drive as far as we thought we would over the weekend. Software onboard Curiosity sensed the rover was struggling to travel over the challenging terrain more than we had anticipated… [More at link]
