jbridges
Subscribe to jbridges's posts24th April 2016 Sol 1322
We have just completed our latest drillhole at Lubango. This is a drill into the Stimson sandstone, trying to characterise the silica-rich mineralogy: has it been derived from low temperature fluids after the rock has formed, or were high temperature silica grains brought in by winds as the sandstone was forming? CheMin XRD will help […]
17th April 2016 Sol 1315
Here is a NavCam mosaic of the Naukluft Plateau. We are looking around us for the next drill target. A particular feature is searching for, and trying to understand, silica enrichments. The formation we are driving over is called the Stimson and is thought to have formed from ancient wind blown sediments which cut down […]
5th April 2016 Sol 1303
We have just started an MSL team meeting at Caltech in Pasadena, California. We are welcoming new team members and discussing our findings since the last team meeting in Paris. The Mission Manager Jim Erickson noted that as we have a Pu238 Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) as far as he is concerned the mission can go […]
18th March 2016 Sol 1285
One of the ChemCam capabilities is to use its Remote MicroImager (RMI) to take images of our laser LIBS targets, but also of more distant features. These black and white images give fantastic contrast and resolution. The pixel scale is 20 micro radians per pixel, meaning RMI can resolve 4 mm at 100 metres distance. Here is a […]
14th March 2016 Sol 1282
Today the latest addition to the Mars mission flotilla was launched by ESA and Roscosmos. Trace Gas Orbiter was launched on a Proton rocket from Baikonur in Kazakhstan. The news from Baikonur is that all of ‘Breeze M’ stage burns were successful. Following that, separation of the actual Trace Gas Orbiter from the Breeze M stage […]
11th March 2016 Sol 1278
In the last few days we have been finding these rounded cm-sized nodules on eroded faces of the underlying Stimson sandstone. On Earth they can form when Fe-rich oxidising groundwaters flow through buried sediments. Although we haven’t seen these features before with MSL, we have had a new paper about the effects of groundwater in the […]
3rd March 2016 Sol 1271
Every year, much of the planetary science community gather at the Lunar and Planetary Science conference in Houston. It is one of the times that the Curiosity results are first presented beyond the MSL team and discussed. I will be presenting some of our team’s results that use the ChemCam data on the igneous clasts […]
15th February 2016 Sol 1254
We have now started driving away from the main Namib dunes, and onto the Naukluft Plateau. We plan to make one more shorter stop where the dunes cross the plateau, but our current emphasis is on driving.
29th January 2016 Sol 1238
Here is MAHLI’s selfie of Curiosity at work on the Hebron part of the Namib dune. Its a mosaic of 57 images. We have scuffed the sand with a rover wheel to get fresh surfaces for this weekend’s ChemCam analyses and MastCam images. Sand deposits are a great way of getting an average composition of […]
17th January 2016 Sol 1226
Here is a MastCam image of the scoop taken from the Namib dune. This was taken just prior to closing the scoop and sieving taking place as the turret of the robotic arm was rotated. Following that the material was dropped into the SAM and CheMin solid inlets.
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