18th June 2014 Sol 664

Today I am GeoSTL lead.  As we approach our first martian year we are concentrating on driving.  We recently managed 120 m in one sol.  Some of the time we use AutoNav drives, though beforehand we plan to avoid boulder fields in the hazard and navcam images. 

This NavCam image shows what we are calling Robert Frost Slope East on the left hand side of the photograph.  On the top of that is what we call the ‘Capping Unit’ which is a dark, hard rock which overlies the sloping rocks of conglomerate.  This capping unit is an interesting target for ChemCam (when we can reach it within about 4-5 m distance) because it seems to have more alkaline compositions.  Unfortunately its hardness is not what we want for driving over!