Sol 1911-12, December 20, 2017, update by MSL scientist Abigail Fraeman: This morning we found ourselves back on familiar ground, near the targets “Lismore” and “Leadhills” that we imaged back on sol 1905. We drove here to take a closer look at the transition between the blue-gray and red rocks in order to understand the geologic processes that may be responsible for this color change. Since we pulled up right alongside this transition, we were able to plan a monster, 180 frame Mastcam stereo mosaic that will cover the entire area with very high-resolution color information. Downlinking all of these frames from Mars to Earth may take some time, but fortunately we’ll have some great opportunities to get big data downlinks during the upcoming holiday. I’m very much looking forward to spending the break unwrapping the data bundles and seeing what’s there!
In addition to the awesome mosaic, we will also have some environmental science observations including an atmospheric tau measurement to monitor dust in the atmosphere, a Mastcam crater rim extinction observation, and a dust devil survey. We’ll collect ChemCam, Mastcam, APXS, and MAHLI closed cover data from targets named “Ben Loyal” and “Ben More.” Because we’re coming up on a long holiday plan… [More at link]