Curiosity update: ChemCam anomaly

Sol 1786, August 15, 2017, update by MSL scientist Ken Herkenhoff: MSL drove over 32 meters last weekend, to a sandy area with a few bedrock blocks, but ChemCam suffered an anomaly and was marked sick after the acquisition of the first RMI mosaic of Vera Rubin Ridge. The instrument is in a safe state and turned off, but no other ChemCam observations were successful last weekend. The instrument team will need at least one sol to recover, so no ChemCam activities will be planned today. The team concluded that it is not essential to acquire RMI data from the previous or current position, and agreed that we should stick with the touch-and-go that was strategically planned. So GEO selected “Emery Cove” as the target for a short APXS integration and 3 MAHLI images. After the arm is stowed, the Right Mastcam will take a picture of a rock named “Hupper” that appears to show cross-bedding and acquire two mosaics of “Shooting Rock” to test techniques for improving the image resolution while the RMI is unavailable. The two mosaics will be identical except for a small pointing offset between them, which… [More at link]