Contact science is back on the table

Changes to the plan on Wednesday, moving the drive one sol earlier, meant that we started planning this morning about 18 meters (about 59 feet) further along the western edge of Gediz Vallis and with all the data we needed for planning . This included the knowledge that once again one of Curiosity’s wheels had lodged in a rock.

Fortunately, unlike Wednesday, it was determined that it was safe to still continue with the full contact science for this weekend. This consisted of two targets Mount Brewer and Reef Lake, two targets on the top and side of the same block.

In addition to contact science, Curiosity has three points to fill with remote imaging. The first two points involve “target science,” which means all imaging of specific targets in our current workspace. Then, after we leave on the second sol, we fill the final sol of the plan with “indeterminate science”, where we care less about knowing exactly where the rover is ahead of time.

Many of the environmental team (or ENV) activities fall under this umbrella, which is why our dedicated “ENV Science Block” (about 30 minutes of environmental activities one morning each weekend) tends to fall at the end of a weekend schedule.

But this is getting ahead of yourself. The weekend schedule begins with two ENV activities—a dust devil movie and a suprahorizon cloud movie. While cloud films are almost always aimed in the same direction, our dust devil film needs to be specifically targeted. Lately we’ve been looking southeast towards a sandier area (which you can see above), to see if we can catch the dust rising there.

After those movies, we hand the reins over to the geology (or GEO) team for the ChemCam observations of Reef Lake and Poison Meadow. Mastcam will follow this up with its own observations of Reef Lake and the AEGIS target from Wednesday’s plan. The rover takes a well-deserved rest before waking up for the contact science I talked about above, followed by a late-evening mastcam mosaic of the Fascination Turret, part of the Gediz Vallis ridge we’ve seen before.

We’re leaving with the second car, but before that we have about another hour of science. ChemCam and Mastcam both have observations of “Heaven Lake” and the upper ridge of Gediz Vallis, and ENV has a line-of-sight observation to see how much dust is in the crater and a deck monitor image before heading for it see if any dust moves around on the rover deck due to motion or wind. Curiosity takes a short nap before a further trip of about 25 meters (about 82 feet).

The final haul of the weekend is a ChemCam special. AEGIS will autonomously select a target for imaging, and then ChemCam has a passive survey of the sky to examine the changing amounts of atmospheric gases. The weekend doesn’t end at midnight though – we’re up in the morning for the promised morning ENV block, which we’ve packed with two cloud movies, another view and a tau observation to see how dusty the atmosphere is.