At Pahrump we are considering potential drill sites. The heavy signs of veining and water will make for an interesting mineralogical and fluid composition study. Meanwhile as a benchmark in the mission’s progress there has been a public announcement about the Mt Sharp results, which includes the sediments we have been studying as we have drive […]
Mars Science Laboratory Blog
1st December 2014 Sol 825
This NavCam image shows a dusty view of Mt Sharp and its layers. It is a sign that we are very close to summer solstice again. That occurs at a Solar Longitude (Ls) of 250 degrees, where Ls = 0 is the Spring Equinox in the northern hemisphere. During southern summer on Mars, the south […]
25th November 2014 Sol 819
We are continuing our detailed traverse around the Pahrump area. I will be Geo ScienceTheme Lead tomorrow and we aim to do more contact science. The MastCam image is of Book Cliffs. You can see the Dust Removal Tool area where we now have APXS compositional data. The ridges in this sediment are clear signs […]
21st November 2014 Sol 815
This MAHLI image shows the importance of the DRT Dust Removal Tool brushes. A section of Pahrump has been exposed by the DRT to reveal striking relict crystal structures in the fine grained sediment. These will have formed after the rock lithified, perhaps by evaporation at the same time as the gypsum veins formed in Yellowknife Bay. When […]
11th November 2014 Sol 806
Mars Science Laboratory has changed our view of Mars: following the 2 Viking landers of 1976 and the Pathfinder Lander in 1997 we had an idea that Mars was predominantly made of basaltic igneous rocks. However, on the basis of what we now know from our 10 km of travels in Gale Crater we are […]
2nd November 2014 Sol 797
This NavCam image shows one of the outcrops we have been analysing in detail at the Chinle outcrop in Pahrump. This could be one of the classic MSL outcrops which helps unlock how Mt Sharp formed and what sort of lakes and deltas were present on Mars. You can see fine scaled layering and cross-bedding, […]
27th October 2014 Sol 791
You can see from the inset on this map that we have started driving again, south towards the higher ground, though in small distances compared to some of the long ~100 m drives we did earlier in the mission. The inset (from HiRISE) superimposed on a HazCam image, shows how one of the important things […]
19th October 2014 Sol 783
Today marks the closest approach of Comet Siding Spring to Mars. Curiosity will be pointing MastCam and ChemCam towards it, and have been practising targeting at stars like Spica. Its a tough targetting job but ChemCam might be able to get molecular information about the composition of gases in the comet’s coma from passive spectra. […]
9th October 2014 Sol 774
This is a night time MAHLI image of the Pahrump drillhole , illuminated by the LEDs. It is a ‘MAHLI merge’ which means that multiple images within individual focus were taken in order to get a deeper depth of field in the combined image. You can see an array – a ’10 by 1′ set […]
1st October 2014 Sol 767
This Left MastCam (‘M34’ because of the focal length) view shows the Pahrump drilled grains just before they are about to be sieved by closing up the scoop and sieve, then turning the whole robotic arm turret. As this is going on, and before we dump the drilled material, there are engineering restrictions on how […]
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