Later today I catch my flight back to the UK and swap Mars time for GMT. Looking back on the first part of this mission, I think we have learnt and achieved a lot. My highlight so far is coming in to jpl and seeing the first clear images of the alluvial fan rocks. We now have many things to think about: the path to Mount Sharp, drilling for subsurface samples, and what is in the base of Glenelg? Some parts of the mission will take time as we are operating delicate instruments to millimetre precision at a long distance from Earth! At other times we will move relatively quickly so as to reach the aqueous sediments in Mt Sharp within about 2 years.
Working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as this mission has started operations has been a fascinating and unique experience with lots of tantalising prospects appearing for Curiosity’s instruments in the next stage of the mission. An enormous amount of engineering, management and sceince work has gone into this project – thousands of people since the project started about 12 years ago. There will be other excting space missions to explore our Solar System but I’m not sure there will ever be another mission quite like this one.
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