July 5th 2013 Sol 324

I am visiting the French ChemCam HQ in the CNRS lab based in Toulouse.  Some of the development of ChemCam was done by the group here.  The ChemCam ‘ops’ role switches between Toulouse and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in New Mexico.

This right navigation camera image shows that we have started on our way out of Yellowknife Bay.  It has been an incredibly successful step on our way to Mount Sharp.  Although the surface red dust masked the identification of clay by infrared spectroscopy (CRISM) on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, CheMin has shown its presence with X-ray diffraction.