jbridges
Subscribe to jbridges's posts25th February 2015 Sol 908
Here is the latest, spectacular MAHLI selfie, made from a mosaic of the microscope imager pictures in January shortly befroe we drilled Mojave2. The yellow place names are where we have drilled, including yestersol at Telegraph_Peak.
23rd February 2015 Sol 907
Our next drill target is Telegraph_Peak. The Pahrump campaign is the most extensive so far, though this is the last planned drill hole The image below is an example of the Navigation Camera mosaic used in planning, with names and numbers of various targets including Telegraph_Peak.
13th February 2015 Sol 897
Now that we have finished drilling and analysing by APXS and ChemCam the Mojave2 drill tailings at Pahrump we have driven on or ‘bumped’ as we say to another target with a different composition determined on an earlier pass around Pahrump. The documentation of the Curiosity tools continues . This MastCam image shows how […]
9th February 2015 Sol 893
Now that our first Pahrump drill is completed one of the things we do is check the CheMIn inlet (which is in the top right of the NavCam image) to check for any debris, blockages etc. This check is fine after the Mojave drill, though you can see that we are gradually accumulating dust on […]
31st January 2015 Sol 885
The second attempt at drilling Mojave has been succesfull by both the minidrill and main drill hole (diameter 1.5 cm, depth ~6 cm). Now we are analysing the tailings with ChemCam and APXS. We will get X-ray diffraction identification from the extracted powder. Mojave may have formed with more evaporating water, in acid conditions rather […]
21st January 2015 Sol 875
The MSL science operations have stood down for a few days whilst a software upgrade goes ahead. Soon we will recommence the drilling campaign. Meanwhile we have got back a stunning MAHLI selfie. You can see Mt. Sharp reflected in the ChemCam telescope.
18th January 2015 Sol 872
Unlike Curiosity the Beagle2 lander never sent a signal back from Mars. However, as a result of some new HiRISE images we now know where it is and what happened. It landed in 2003, about 5 km from its target in Isidis Planitia but the solar panels didn’t fully deploy. As the receiver was underneath […]
14th January 2014 Sol 868
We have started the drilling activities at Pahrump (Mojahave outcrop). This MAHLI image shows that the initial minidrill attempt turned up some unweathered fine grained sediment. The Minidrill is the first test attempt in any drilling sequence. The hole is a few cm across.
31st December 2014 Sol 854
We are continuing the Pahrump localities looped drive. MSL is not working full time over the holidays but we had a ‘3-sol’ plan on the 29th December. I was the Geo Science Theme Lead for the day. We aimed to follow up the dust removal team (DRT) on Santa ana outcrop with ChemCam analyses. Recently […]
17th December 2014 Sol 840
I am at the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco. The big MSL news here is the publication of our discovery of methane in the martian atmosphere. This was done with the Tunable Laser Spectrometer in SAM. Samples of the atmosphere were let in to the spectrometer over a 20 month period. This spectrometer […]
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