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Wednesday 22nd August Sol 16
My favourite MSL image so far. This one shows the extended robotic arm pointing towards the rim of Gale Crater and part of Mt. Sharp on the horizon, where, ultimately, it is heading. You can find other images like this at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/
Tuesday 21st August Sol 16
Today was a day to gather up and consider the data being send back from Curiosity – now we have ChemCam laser data and its images, panoramic images from MastCam, the navigation cameras for plotting our path across the rock plain, the descent imager MARDI, temperature and humidity data. From today we also now know […]
Monday 20th August Sol 15
The robotic arm has been moved for the first time. This is the 70 kg instrument which carries the X-ray spectrometer and close up imager MAHLI. It can make very delicate movements and is at the heart of many of the science investigations that Curiosity will make. So after 16 sols of operations Curiosity has […]
Sunday August 19th Sol 14
Excellent ChemCam LIBS (Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy Results) on our first rock. This means that in addition to imaging data from MastCam we are now getting compositional data. ChemCam will be one of the most frequently used techniques on Curiosity. It will be essential to analyse rocks and ground surfaces before the X-ray Diffraction and […]
Saturday 18th August Sol 13
In order to keep track of time, both on Earth and Mars, a few people on the MSL team wear 2 watches. That is a clear sign that someone at JPL is working on the MSL mission. One is on Gale Crater time and one on Pacific Day time. There used to be a jeweller […]
Friday 17th August Sol 12
We have chosen our first long term direction for Curiosity – and it is going about 0.5 km towards the NE, to an important junction between 3 different rock types. The site has been named Glenelg. This rover target has been identified as part of the mapping work. It has been chosen because we hope […]
Thursday 16th August Sol 11
We have now completed 12 sols of work on Mars. Our work has been split into a combination of instrument checking, starting to look at the new data, particularly the MastCam images, and planning ahead. As the mission progresses we will spend a higher proportion of our time analysing the data as it comes in. […]
Wednesday 15th August Sol 10
As we study images of places never seen before I get the full sense of the excitement of exploration that early explorers on Earth must have felt as they encountered new lands . We have to use the tools and collective experience we have to address the scientific issues that are thrown at us by […]
Tuesday August 14th Sol 9
Barack Obama talked to the JPL engineering team yesterday and everyone else watched a video link of this. He said that if any evidence that there had been microbial life on Mars were found then it would go to the top of his agenda. Some high resolution MastCam panoramas are becoming widely available now. You can see […]
Monday 13th August Sol 7
In a recent paper led by my collaborator Dr Susanne Schwenzer and with a number of MSL scientists as co authors we outlined a scenario whereby heating related to the impact 4 billion years ago caused ‘hydrothermal’ flow of water through the crust. This could be one way of precipitating the clay at Mt. Sharp. […]
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