Curiosity update: Little bit of everything

Sol 1727, June 14, 2017, update by MSL scientist Rachel Kronyak: After a successful drive, our parking spot included a nice patch of Murray bedrock to allow us to perform contact science (MAHLI and APXS) in today’s plan. Our target for contact science is “Jones Marsh,” a dark patch of the Murray that you can see just above the rightmost corner of Curiosity’s mast shadow in the Navcam image. The GEO group also planned a suite of observations of Vera Rubin Ridge (VRR), which we’re making great progress towards. Mastcam will perform a multispectral observation on “Freeman Ridge,” a small butte just in front of VRR that shows interesting color variations. ChemCam will then take a mosaic of VRR using its Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) to complement the Mastcam mosaic we took in yesterday’s plan. We will take an additional Mastcam mosaic of “Spaulding Mountain,” an area of exposed Murray formation blocks along our drive path. [More at link]