Recently MastCam and ChemCam imaging revealed 2 iron meteorites along our traverse. These are the first found by Curiosity, though the 2 MER, Spirit and Opportunity also identified iron meteorites. The Curiosity ones: called Lebanon and Littleton were identified by their high reflectivity (‘specular’) compared to the other rocks, native to Gale Crater. They are < […]
Mars Science Laboratory Blog
14th July 2014 Sol 688
In addition to driving towards the Murray Buttes gap in the dunes, and our path onto Mt. Sharp, we stop sometimes to do contact science. The image gives an example of what this entails. We have to get the APXS detector head as close as possible to a target of interest (in this case one […]
2nd July 2014 Sol 678
Here is a new classic image from Mars: a selfie from Kimberley. You can see the dark drill hole and the practice drill hole beside it. Curiosity itself is looking a bit dusty after a year’s work on Mars. Images like this always remind me how big the rover is in relation to many of […]
24th June 2014 Sol 669
It is sol 669 and this equals 1 martian year since our landing in August 2012. At the moment we are doing a lot of driving – frequently over 100 m per day in this phase of the mission. It has been a remarkable mission, and although there is much to do we have already radically moved forward […]
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 […]
4th June 210 Sol 651
A new role for me as I join the HiRISE camera team for an operations/image selection role for the first time. HiRISE produces up to 30 cm/pixel images (anotherwords we can identify metre-scale objects) and take stereo images of the surface of Mars. HiRISE is critical in the choice of landing sites including Gale Crater for MSL. […]
23rd May 2014 Sol 639
This MAHLI image (with a contrast stretch) shows the path ahead towards Murray Buttes and across the dark dunes to Mt. Sharp. We are now in another phase of driving with opportunistic science along the way. This image also shows a clear change in the angle of the sedimentary beds between the lower and upper parts of the 5.5. […]
15th May 2014 Sol 630
As you can see from this NavCam image we are now driving away from Mt Remarkable. At the same time CheMin is taking a series of analyses over many hours on the drilled Windjana powder, to help strengthen the detection of minerals.
8th May 2014 Sol 624
We have succesfully drilled Windjana and transferred the material to the CHIMRA system for CheMin analyses. Now we will be able to anslyes the tailings by ChemCam and APXS. There are also some clasts or perhaps nodules around the drill area, it is important to get a combination of the composition of the material around […]
6th April 2014 Sol 622
I am visiting Thurso, which is on the far north Scottish coast. The Institute of Mechanical Engineers, associated with the Dounreay nuclear facility, invited me to give a talk about Curiosity. One of the advantages of talks like this is that it is a good way of visiting the various analogue sites in the UK. […]
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