Written by Natalie Moore, Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems
Earth planning date: Wednesday, April 30, 2025
We’re back in our standard “touch and go” plan regime today, where we sandwich a midday remote science block between morning-APXS and afternoon-MAHLI contact science arm blocks. We had our first late-slide 9 a.m. PDT start in quite a while due to our “isolated nominal” plan on Monday! This meant the whole team was ready and “patiently” (read: not-so-patiently) waiting for our drive data to come down around 8:40 this morning. Thankfully, everything we were waiting for came down to Earth and told us Curiosity was right where we wanted her to be! The planning begins…
Sol 4527 contains most of our activities in this plan. We start off about 10:00 local Gale time with a DRT and APXS analysis of contact science target “Tamarack Valley,” a rough but brushable bedrock target in our workspace. We leave the arm unstowed (and out of the way) for our remote science block spanning the hours of about 12:35-13:45. That block starts with a large, 76-frame stereo Mastcam mosaic covering the boxwork structures to the west while ChemCam’s instrument cools down to allow for LIBS.
After Mastcam is done, ChemCam shoots their LIBS on a rougher bedrock target named “Aguanga,” and an RMI mosaic of the boxwork structures included in the Mastcam mosaic. About 14:00 local time, MAHLI finishes the contact science with a full suite of Tamarack Valley (25-centimeter, 5-centimeter stereo, and 1-centimeter images). Then we drive! Hopefully about 30 meters closer (about 98 feet) to the boxwork structures for our weekend plan.
Curiosity takes the second sol easier with some Navcam dust-devil and horizon movies, along with a rover-decided LIBS target at our new location to start off science decisions for Friday.
