Sol 1925-26, January 3, 2018, update by MSL scientist Michelle Minitti: Curiosity’s hard work over the holiday break paid off, giving the science team a rich collection of new data to assess and a new workspace to explore. The science team certainly got the year off to a bang with a very full plan at our new parking spot!
The layered rocks in the workspace extend away from the rover like a staircase, and our observations were aimed at “walking” up the staircase to survey similarities and differences in the layers on our journey. We started near the bottom of the workspace, acquiring MAHLI mosaics on layers in the targets “Jura” (the triangular-shaped target immediately in front of the rover) and “Crinan.” About halfway up the staircase, we stopped at the target “Assynt” for MAHLI imaging and chemistry measurements with ChemCam and APXS. A few more steps up brought us to the target “Barra,” which we analyzed with ChemCam. Finally, at the farthest point where the arm could reach (the upper right edge of the above image) we acquired MAHLI images and ChemCam data from the target “Elgin.” We acquired… [More at link]