8th September 2013 Sol 388

In our last main drive we managed 140 m in one sol! This means we will get to Waypoint 1 more quickly than expected.  One possible target type at the Waypoint will be to look for clasts in conglomerates, as these are likely to have preserved material from outside the crater bowl. The image shows a MAHLI image from sol 387 of what may be such a conglomerate with dark basaltic clasts and a lighter matrix.

As we drive we are also doing ‘blind targetting’ with ChemCam and the MAHLI microimager, as we dont always have time to adjust the mast for ChemCam, or deploy the arm for MAHLI.   It gives us a representative analysis of the terrain we are driving through.   

On the 6th September Roger Wiens, the ChemCam Principal Investigator from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, gave a talk at Leicester University, summarising the mission so far and results from the 90,000 laser shots we have taken.  Roger illustrated the targetting of ChemCam by dropping a 1p coin on one side of the lecture theatre and walking to the other, showing how far away we target rocks.

http://www2.le.ac.uk/news/events/2013/september/seventy-thousand-laser-shots-on-mars-curiosity-rover-results-from-the-chemcam-instrument

Next week we have a Mars Science Laboratory session at the European Planetary Science Congress in London.