Curiosity update: Things that go bump…

2161ML0116380080803465E01_DXXX-br2Sols 2163-64, September 5, 2018, update by MSL scientist Lucy Thompson: In our case, the Curiosity rover! The main focus of our 2-sol (sol – martian day) plan today is to bump (drive ~15 m) the rover into place for an attempt at drilling an interesting grey coloured patch of bedrock, identified from orbit within the Jura member of the Murray formation on the Vera Rubin Ridge, referred to as “Loch Eriboll.” We want to figure out how these patches of bedrock differ from the surrounding tan coloured rocks, more typical of what we see from orbit.

We had the potential to do a “touch and go” in the plan, whereby we would unstow the arm and use the APXS and MAHLI instruments to examine the chemistry and texture of a target close-up, before driving away. However, the workspace consists of a lot of broken up, smaller pieces of rock and we already have a lot of compositional and textural information of similar rocks. The ability to use the arm is instead being utilized to acquire MAHLI close-up imaging of the REMS UV sensor. This is requested periodically to check for dust and the general health of the sensor…. [More at link]

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