Sols 1858-60, October 27, 2017, update by MSL scientist Mark Salvatore: Following a series of setbacks this week, Curiosity is on track to have a productive, albeit stationary, weekend. Monday’s communication issue and Wednesday’s possible difficulties in delivering the “Ogunquit Beach” sample to the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument have given the science team a series of headaches as we try to make progress along Vera Rubin Ridge. Even yesterday, the team discovered an error with the left Mastcam data transfer that has marked the instrument temporarily SICK and is preventing us from acquiring new data from it until sometime after this weekend’s plan. Nonetheless, the team is optimistic moving into the weekend, and has planned a really nice suite of observations.
Curiosity will try one more time to deliver Ogunquit Beach sample to the SAM instrument, and SAM will hopefully perform an evolved gas analysis (EGA) on the sample overnight on the first evening of this weekend’s plan. Curiosity will spend the majority of the following day (Saturday) sleeping and recharging, as the EGA analyses require significant power to perform. Towards the end of that day, Curiosity will image and brush a patch of flat bedrock in front of the rover named “Sibasa” and will analyze this patch of bedrock with the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) instrument to accurately characterize the chemistry of this region. This will be an overnight measurement… [More at link]