Curiosity update: A fashionably late data downlink

FLB_563594825EDR_F0662414FHAZ00302M_-br2Sol 1872-75, November 13, 2017, update by MSL scientist Abigail Fraeman: Because the alignment of a Mars sol versus an Earth day is constantly changing, we sometimes start our planning day a couple hours earlier or later than normal. Today was one of those days where we were scheduled to start the planning process several hours later than normal. However, our actually start time ended up being even a little later than expected because there was an issue with the downlink, which meant we did not receive any data from Mars until ~45 minutes into the planning process. Because of this delay, we didn’t have enough time to do a full assessment of the rover’s position in order to determine whether it would be stable and safe to move the arm. Fortunately there was still lots of science to do, so we had no problem filling the plan with remote sensing observations plus a small drive that should get us into an even better position for contact science on Monday.

Since today is Friday, we put together a three sol plan that will take Curiosity through the weekend. On the morning of the first sol, we will have a remote sensing block with Mastcam deck monitoring, an observation of the atmosphere with Mastcam, and ChemCam observations on targets “Fort Brown,” “Kirkwood,” and “Fairfield.” We will also take a Mastcam multispectral observation of what might be our… [More at link]

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