With a successful drill campaign at “Nontron” in the books, the team continued to wrap up drill hole observations and also grab some final observations of the interesting materials that mark this area. ChemCam will acquire a passive spectra of sulfate-bearing buttes beckoning to us from farther up "Mount Sharp." Mastcam will image the sand targets “Thenac” and “Thenon” to look for wind-induced changes, and the target “Creyssac,” a coherent crack in nearby sand to watch how - or if - it changes. Mastcam and Navcam will both monitor the amount of dust in the atmosphere, and Navcam will acquire a movie looking for dust devils. RAD, REMS, and DAN maintain their steady watch over the Gale crater environment through the plan. MAHLI will image both spots that APXS analyzed on the pile of discarded Nontron drill sample in the last plan.

After the Nontron sample, MAHLI will team up with APXS for a multi-spot analysis, or raster, on the “Chassenon” target. We most commonly associate rasters with ChemCam, as moving through multiple spots in succession - sometimes in a grid, sometimes in a line - is how ChemCam analyzes a given target. Such rasters take 20-30 minutes, depending on the number of points in the raster. A raster with APXS and MAHLI takes much longer! MAHLI and APXS are both at the end of the rover arm, so each MAHLI image and each APXS analysis relies on the arm and turret to gently and accurately place the instruments where the science team wants them to go. Those arm motions are slow and careful, as you would expect if you were operating a 2-meter long arm weighing nearly 100 kilograms! The resulting data, though, make the effort worth it. The Chassenon target is the white-gray-white striped feature at the edge of the bedrock block to the left of the drill hole in the image above. If we only obtained a single APXS analysis over the center of Chassenon, the resulting chemistry would be a mix of that of the feature, the sand to its left, and the bedrock to its right. By adding two additional analyses - one slightly shifted off the center to get a mix of the feature and the surrounding bedrock, one over only bedrock - we can better isolate the chemistry of the feature. That is done by combining the chemistry from the APXS analyses with the proportions of materials in each APXS field of view, as determined with the MAHLI images that accompany each APXS analysis. The manner in which the chemistry varies with those proportions allows the chemistries of the individual materials to be separated.

We anticipate leaving our Nontron drill site in the next few sols, and just as you might snap one last picture of a memorable vacation spot, MAHLI will wrap up the plan with a rover selfie featuring the spectacular “Mont Mercou” in the background. Smile, Curiosity!

It takes careful planning to manage the rover’s battery and power, much like we all manage our cell phone batteries and try to keep them charged. But we have to plan several sols ahead. The analogy would be if we had to plan ahead three days when we wanted to stream a TV show on our phone and knowing we’d only be able to charge it that day from 7-8 a.m. Usually when we plan a SAM activity (this is a recent Mastcam image of the SAM inlet covers), like yesterday, we expect a power “gift” in the next sol where SAM does not use as much power as we budgeted. Yesterday, that was not the case, and combined with late changes to yesterday’s plan, we came into today’s plan with 5% less power than expected. That’s a difference you likely never notice for your cell phone, but that was enough to drastically reduce our extra science time today. We managed to still fit in a ChemCam long-distance image mosaic, but otherwise are limited to our drill campaign activities where we will dump the remaining powdered rock in the drill onto the surface and conduct contact science on it with MAHLI and APXS.

Curiosity is still parked in front of the magnificent "Mont Mercou" cliff face as we continue to work through analyses of the "Nontron drill site. Over the weekend Curiosity dropped off more sample to SAM, and today we’re planning an additional SAM EGA analysis in addition to other remote sensing activities.

Today’s one sol plan starts with several environmental monitoring activities, including a Navcam line of sight observation and Mastcam image of the crater rim to characterize the dust content in the atmosphere. Then ChemCam planned several instrument calibration activities, followed by RMI mosaics of “Jayac” and “Journiac” to assess variations in laminae and diagenetic features exposed in the Mont Mercou cliff face. Mastcam also planned a super resolution mosaic with the intent to increase the level of detail that we can see in an image by using slightly offset camera pointin gs. We hope these observations will help us interpret the spectacular stratification seen in the above Navcam image.

It was an easy day for me as SOWG Chair, and it was helpful to prepare me for my first shift as Long Term Planner tomorrow. Feeling inspired and humbled as Curiosity explores this beautiful outcrop!

Two main activities will dominate the plan this weekend as we near the end of the “Nontron” drill campaign. Firstly, four additional portions of the drilled sample will be dropped to the SAM instrument in order to perform Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry next week (when we will have more power available) to further characterize the chemistry of Nontron. Secondly, the drill bit assembly will undergo what we refer to as “portion to exhaustion” to empty any remaining portions from the drill bit and prepare for dumping the rest of the drilled sample to the ground, which will also take place next week, along with analysis of the drill fines with APXS and MAHLI. These activities require detailed and precise planning by the rover engineers.

While the rover is parked at this stunning location, with the ~7-meter high “Mont Mercou” cliff in front of us and the rest of "Mount Sharp" and the sulfate-bearing unit (identified from orbit) as backdrop, we will take advantage of the view. Curiosity will acquire ChemCam passive observations of the “Rocamadour” and “Font de Gaume” targets. Rocamadour is the rounded feature on the top left of the Mont Mercou cliff and Font de Gaume is an example of one of many dark, resistant plates/fins that are eroding out of the cliff. The textures and colour variations in the cliff are mesmerizing and we are striving to understand them. We will also take a Mastcam mosaic pointed towards the sulfate-bearing hills beyond, in anticipation of our future exploration of this area.

A whole suite of environmental monitoring activities is also included in our weekend plan. We will take advantage of being parked at the same location for a period of time by imaging the drill fines around the Nontron drill hole to look for any changes due to wind activity. Mastcam will also take full tau observations pointed towards the sun at two different times of day as well as a sky survey observation. Navcam will acquire a large dust devil observation, zenith movie, suprahorizon movie and single frame line of sight observation. Standard REMS, DAN and RAD activities are also in the plan.

As the APXS payload uplink/downlink representative today it was a relatively quiet day for me. I did have to report on the downlink and the health of the APXS instrument, but until sample is dumped from the drill bit assembly we are not able to deploy the APXS, which is also on the end of the arm. However, I spent the time looking at the many images of this fascinating area and identified an interesting vein target that we will hopefully get to investigate with APXS next week. We should be able to determine what the chemistry of the vein-filling material and compare it to the chemistry of the surrounding bedrock. This could help to elucidate the nature of relatively late-stage alteration episodes affecting the rocks here.

In photography, the right lighting is essential. Portrait photographers and Instagram selfie afficionados favor the kind of soft lighting that smooths over bumps and imperfections. Geology photographers, on the other hand, want to see all of the bumps, lines, divots and wrinkles, as those features tell the story of how a rock was formed and altered. To get the right lighting for accentuating the small-scale textures of "Mont Mercou," the team is planning to photograph the cliff face right before sunset on sol 3063, when the Sun is at its lowest point in the sky. We hope this new Mastcam mosaic will bring out even more detail than we can see in the image above.

The evening Mastcam photoshoot is just one part of this two-sol plan. The main event is the second analysis of the "Nontron" drill sample by CheMin, to refine what we’re learning about the mineralogy of the rocks at the base of Mont Mercou. We’ll look some more at Mont Mercou and other regions earlier in the day with Mastcam, and will watch for clouds in the sky at twilight. We’ll also use ChemCam’s RMI to image a butte called “mini-Mercou" to the east, which is a re-shoot of some previous images that were slightly out of focus.

What happens next weekend and beyond depends on what the SAM data reveal about the Nontron drill sample, and whether the team decides to perform more analyses with SAM before getting ready to drive onwards and upwards into the sulfate-bearing units of Mt. Sharp.

With the drill campaign well under way, we get to take in all the vistas of the magnificent landscape around us. The image above is taken by the front hazard camera and shows the new drill hole and the landscape around us. Mont Mercou is a fascinating place with lots of structures visible. So the team spent some of today’s planning to discuss these beautiful details and to prioritize what we want to look at, so that we do not miss anything. It’s always good to have a bit of discussion and share all the details we individually discover, be it in the way the rocks are layered or the differences in colour or how many veins there are. If you want to, you can browse the raw images section of the website to get an impression of all those details!

Tosol, it is a SAM focused day, with SAM doing its EGA measurement. This means we are also a little closer to the question I posed back on the sol 3056-3057 blog: Is there nontronite in the Nonton drill hole? If there is, there will be water released from the sample in characteristic patterns – and with that I mean at specific temperatures while the sample is being heated gradually from its ambient temperature to about 900°C.

SAM is not the only instrument busy today, though. ChemCam is taking a long-distance view with its remote micro imager onto a hill in the background of Mont Mercou, while Mastcam continues to work on completing a mosaic that covers entire Mont Mercou.

Humans minds don’t easily comprehend the vast eons of time that separate us from the places we explore in space with robots like Curiosity. Our minds are designed to think in terms of hours, days, seasons, and years, extending up to a duration of our lifetime and perhaps those a few generations before us. When we explore Mars, we’re roving over rocks that formed billions of years ago and many of which have been exposed on the surface for at least tens or hundreds of millions of years. It’s a gap of time that we can understand numerically, but there’s no way to have an innate feel for the incredible ancientness of the planet and Gale Crater.

Today, Curiosity is continuing our drill campaign at Nontron and preparing SAM to study the sample later this week. While that’s ongoing, Mastcam will take a sure-to-be-spectacular 360° mosaic and ChemCam will study the Mont Mercou cliff in front of us (as seen in this Navcam image), including a target called “Font de Gaume.” Font de Gaume cave in France is home to stunning paleolithic cave art of bison, reindeer, and other Ice Age wildlife painted 19-27,000 years ago. Even that length of time, at least 15,000 years before the pyramids were built in Egypt, is barely 0.0005% of the time back to when Gale Crater formed on Mars.

There is a lot to be looking out for at Curiosity’s current parking position. First, and foremost, there is the drill target Nontron, which has been investigated by APXS and will be drilled in this plan. An image of APXS on the target is shown in the image above. Nontron, while of course a town in France, is also the namesake for a very famous clay mineral, famous among Mars researchers and enthusiasts, as it is one of the first clay minerals identified from orbit. Clays are fascinating minerals that can store water and thus make an environment more habitable. But will Curiosity find nontronite at Nontron… well, that is to be seen once the drill is successful, CheMin and SAM have done their measurements and all the data are analyzed. Stay tuned!

The drill is not the only exciting feature in view of the rover. Have a close look at this Navcam image. You cannot miss that rock perched on top of Mont Mercou, which now has the target name ‘Rocamadour.’ The question is: Is Rocamadour made of the same material as the rest of Mont Mercou? Mastcam is about to find this out as it is targeting one of its two multispectral observations on this target. The second multispectral investigation is of the Nontron drill fines. Mastcam is also starting a stereo imaging campaign of Mont Mercou and investigating a block further away called ‘Grand Brassac.’

ChemCam is also looking at the Nontron drill fines with a passive investigation and has two RMI long distance imaging investigations on targets ‘Teyjat’ and ‘Vergt,’ both to look at the many fascinating details that Mont Mercou has to offer. And, to quote one of the mission leads during today’s planning: ‘Mont Mercou is big, but it is tiny compared to what is ahead of us up the hill!’. But for the moment, fingers crossed to find nontronite at Nontron!

Curiosity is ready to go ahead with the first drill of 2021! Today we are planning preliminary observations of the potential drill location called “Nontron.” This includes MAHLI images, APXS integrations, a ChemCam passive observation, and Mastcam multispectral images of Nontron. This plan also includes a drill preload test to prepare for the drill procedure. After collecting this wealth of data at Nontron, we anticipate moving forward with the full drill in the next plan.

The plan is also packed with exciting non-drill related activities. The rover is parked near the Mont Mercou cliff face, a towering outcrop that gives us a great view of the sedimentary structures that are present. The plan includes a ChemCam passive observation and a Mastcam multispectral mosaic of part of the outcrop, called “La Coquille,” to investigate the chemistry and any potential color variations.

There is an additional Mastcam mosaic that covers several blocks of bedrock at the base of the La Coquille outcrop. This group of blocks (shown in the image above) inspired one science team member to name this target “La Madeleine,” similar to the children’s book. Here is our martian take on the story:

On an outcrop on Mars all covered with veins
Were twelve little rocks in two straight lines
This target is called La Madeleine!

Finally, Curiosity is looking towards the sky. The plan includes a Mastcam mosaic taken at twilight to monitor clouds in the evening sky. Additionally, a ChemCam passive sky observation has been coordinated with measurements from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft. This joint observation will be used to compare what the ground-based rover observes in the sky with what the spacecraft sees from orbit.

In planning today, the team decided to drive to a drill location closer to the cliff face of "Mont Mercou." Before we do that, Mastcam will take a stereo mosaic of the drill site (the flat patch of bright outcrop visible in this Navcam image) as well as a larger stereo mosaic of the cliff face to get a high-resolution look at the layers exposed there. ChemCam will join in too, with a 20-image mosaic of the top of the cliff. Mastcam also will search for dust devils and measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere on Sol 3051. In the late afternoon on Sol 3051, MAHLI will collect a series of images of the targets “Montrem” and “Peyrat” and then APXS will measure the composition of both targets, starting in the evening on Peyrat and continuing overnight on Montrem.

Sol 3052 will start with Navcam atmospheric observations, followed by ChemCam passive and Mastcam multispectral observations of the brushed spot on Montrem. Mastcam will also take a stereo mosaic of the target “Grand Brassac” and a nearby butte. We will then drive toward Mont Mercou and collect Navcams and a MARDI image from our new location. Overnight between sols 3052 and 3053, SAM has a calibration activity. On Sol 3053, we will use Navcam to watch for clouds, and both Navcam and Mastcam to measure atmospheric dust.