Sol 744, September 9, 2014. Curiosity stands next to Jubilee Pass butte, a multi-layered outcrop in the Owens Valley depression. If the rover continues along the outcrop, it faces a low sand ridge ahead on the right.
Sol 744 raw images (from all cameras), and Curiosity’s latest location map.
Vinogradov is an old, 224-km diameter, heavily degraded impact crater in southern Margaritifer Terra. The southeastern floor of Vinogradov is covered with several mysterious light-toned, sub-meter scale “blobs” that lack obvious layering. In some places the light-toned material appears to have filled pre-existing craters giving them a circular appearance… [More at link]
This week dust-lifting occurred locally in the northern hemisphere, with storms observed in Deuteronilus, Utopia, Amazonis, and Acidalia, and western Chryse. Very diffuse water ice clouds and haze were present along much of the northern mid to high latitudes…. [More at link including video]
Slope monitoring in Acidalia Planitia. Beautiful Mars series.
NASA will host a telecon at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT) Thursday, Sept. 11, to discuss mission status and the future science campaign for the Mars rover Curiosity mission.
Participants in the teleconference will be:
• Jim Green, director, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington
• John Grotzinger, Curiosity project scientist, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
• Kathryn Stack, Curiosity Rover mission scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. California
Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at… [See link for more details]
Sol 3778, September 9, 2014. With Opportunity turned to face east toward the interior of Endeavour Crater, the front left Hazcam caught the setting Sun throwing the long shadow of the rover.
Opportunity raw images, its latest mission status, and a location map.
From a ridgeline viewpoint, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity recently recorded a scene looking back over its own tracks made from nearly half a mile (more than 700 meters) of southbound driving. Opportunity’s panoramic camera (Pancam) recorded the component images on Aug. 15, 2014, from an elevated portion of the west rim of Endeavour Crater. A brief video places the scene into context with the rover’s entire driving route of more than 25 miles (40 kilometers) since the mission’s 2004 landing in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars… [More at link, including video]
THEMIS Image of the Day, September 10, 2014. This VIS image shows a small portion of Aeolis Mensae, a complex region of hills, plateaus and graben. The prominent channel in the lower half of the image is a fault bounded graben.
More THEMIS Images of the Day by geological topic.
Sol 745, September 9, 2014, update from USGS Scientist Ryan Anderson: “We have not received any data from sol 744 yet, so sol 745 is a simple day of untargeted remote sensing. ChemCam has an observation of the sky (with the laser off)…” [More at link]
Sol 743, September 9, 2014. Light-toned lines extend away from Curiosity in this two-frame Navcam composite of Owens Valley (click on the image to see larger version). The lines resemble wheel tracks, except the rover has not driven across the ground where they are. Possibly they show a light-toned layer lies just below the loose surface sand and dirt and is exposed only in places. Panamint Butte is at left.
Sol 743 raw images (from all cameras), and Curiosity’s latest location map.
