Sol 1713, May 31, 2017, update by MSL scientist Abigail Fraeman Tosol on Mars was one of those sols where we simply did not have enough hours to get everything done that we had wanted to do. Our Tuesday drive placed us perfectly in front of a very interesting outcrop that looked slightly different in color and texture from the typical Murray rocks we’ve been seeing for the last few hundred meters. We had originally thought we would spend the morning doing contact science on this outcrop and then drive away in the afternoon, completing everything before the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flew overhead and it would be time to call home. However, when the downlink came in this morning, the science team found there was a lot we wanted to look at that was accessible in our workspace. The rover drivers also reported that the route ahead was clear and we would be able to do a nice long drive. With all of these options but a limited amount of time available before the orbital pass, we concluded it would be best to plan to spend all of the sol doing science on the outcrop, and then wait until tomorrow to drive away. [More at link]
-
Recent Posts
Archives
Links
general
mission instruments
- CRISM: Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars
- CTX: Context Camera
- HiRISE: High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment
- MARSIS: Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding
- SHARAD: Shallow Radar
- THEMIS: Thermal Emission Imaging System
missions
- All Mars missions list
- Curiosity rover
- ExoMars
- Hope (al-Amal) orbiter
- InSight
- Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN)
- Mars Exploration Rovers (MER)
- Mars Express (MEX)
- Mars Odyssey
- Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) / Mangalyaan
- Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
- Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)
- Perseverance Rover
- Tianwen-1 orbiter/rover
news