Following a few small hiccups with different rover activities recently, Curiosity has a fully packed plan today! The MAHLI dust cover successfully closed yesterday, allowing us to move the robotic arm out of the workspace and to use it for a quick APXS analysis on a nearby rock target named “Auriac.” The Auriac rock is roughly the size of an American football and is characterized by nodular textures along its sides. The top of Auriac is relatively smooth, which is thought to be indicative of erosion as opposed to a change in rock properties within the relatively small target. ChemCam will also acquire a 5x1 LIBS raster on a target named “Sarlat la Caneda,” which is a typical patch of local bedrock with some interesting veins cutting through it. In addition to these two chemistry measurements, Mastcam will complete the imaging of the local bedrock surroundings, while ChemCam will also acquire a long-distance remote image mosaic of a target on "Mt. Sharp" that was first imaged about three years ago from a very different vantage point further downslope on Mt. Sharp. It will be really interesting to see how this new view will help us to understand the sedimentary structures exposed within Mt. Sharp. After these measurements, Curiosity will head east to a different bedrock region that shows evidence for additional alteration and diagenetic features including veins and “fin-like” features. The plan is for Curiosity to park at this new location for a few days before continuing her trek up Mt. Sharp over the weekend.

Curiosity started the week at her familiar “Bardou” drill location on top of "Mont Mercou,” her departure stymied once again by a stubborn MAHLI cover. The effort to close the MAHLI cover over the weekend was unsuccessful, which meant that, as with the drive, our APXS analyses of the discarded Bardou drill sample and the drill hole cuttings did not execute. The focus of today’s plan was to tweak the command to close the MAHLI cover to help ensure its success, give the APXS analyses another try, and pick up a few last observations of the terrain around us.

In good instrument news, ChemCam successfully acquired a LIBS raster of the bedrock target "Jumilhac le Grand” over the weekend, clearing the way for us to acquire another raster in this plan. To complement the representative bedrock analyzed at Jumilhac le Grand, the team chose a collection of resistant, gray-toned knobs that dot the bedrock of this area for today’s target, dubbed “Monfaucon.” ChemCam will also acquire an RMI mosaic of one of the buttes to our east that we will (hopefully) be driving farther away from tomorrow.

Keep those collective fingers crossed for MAHLI success!!

There was a small hiccup opening MAHLI’s dust cover at the beginning of sol 3103 plan which precluded many of the activities that we had hoped to complete in that plan, including the drive. We therefore started our morning still perched near the edge of "Mont Mercou" at the “Bardou” drill location. While it’s too bad we weren’t able to drive away, the team did a great job making lemonade out of lemons, and we took the opportunity to sneak in a few more observations before leaving. These will include filling in a small gap in our impressive Mastcam stereo coverage of the area and collecting an APXS observation over the densest portion of the dumped drilled sample.

We’ll begin our three-sol weekend plan by acquiring a ChemCam LIBS observation on a bedrock target named “Jumilhac le Grand,” a ChemCam passive spectral observation on a mixed vein and bedrock target named “Tour Blanche,” some Mastcam images of the nearby rocks, and Mastcam and Navcam observations to monitor the environment. After our remote sensing, MAHLI will snap a photo of the drill tailings pile, and then we’ll spend the evening and late night collecting APXS data from the dumped drilled sample and from the drill tailings pile. On the second sol of the plan, we’ll collect more Mastcam images, including some Mastcam multispectral images of the drill tailings, and environmental monitoring data. After night falls, we’ll run a second CheMin analysis on the Bardou drilled sample that is still stored inside the instrument. Finally, on the last sol of the plan, we’ll try once again to pack up and drive away, continuing our journey onwards and upwards.

The sol 3103-3104 plan marks the end of our campaign at “Bardou.” We’ll start off with Navcam and Mastcam atmospheric dust measurements, followed by several Mastcam stereo mosaics. The first will look for any changes in the target “Chavangnac.” Next we have a big 8x7 frame mosaic toward the southwest, followed by a 5x1 frame mosaic reshooting some of the cliff edge areas that were out of focus in a previous mosaic. We wrap up the morning of Sol 3103 with a ChemCam passive observation of the target “Tour Blanche,” a freshly broken rock surface.

The afternoon of Sol 3103 is full of arm activities. MAHLI will first take a picture of the Bardou dump pile, and then, like any tourist at a scenic vista, we will take a selfie! Once the selfie is done, Mastcam will take a series of pictures of the sampling system on the arm. Later in the evening, MAHLI will take a look at the CheMin inlet to make sure no sample material got stuck there. Finally, we’ll place APXS on the drill tailings for an overnight measurement.

On Sol 3104, MAHLI will take a picture of the APXS location, and then Mastcam will take a few additional frames of the panorama to the southwest, with the arm out of the way. Mastcam will also take a multispectral look at the Bardou dump pile.

With our final observations finished, we will bid “adieu” to Bardou and drive away. We’ll collect our standard post drive imaging, including clast survey with Mastcam and MARDI, and an extra “upper tier” Navcam subframe to help with targeting on Sol 3105.

We’re finishing up our activities at the "Bardou" drill hole today and in Wednesday’s plan. Our onboard laboratories, SAM and CheMin, have each completed their work, and today we will dump the remaining amount of rock sample out of the drill assembly onto the ground where APXS and MAHLI will study it in the afternoon and overnight.

This left relatively little time for additional science, and outside of planning a few Mastcam images, GEO spent most of the time today prioritizing activities that will occur tomorrow. As ENV theme lead, I included a long dust devil movie (nearly 30 minutes long) looking back down Mt. Sharp, roughly in the direction of this Navcam image (and note that we are parked at a tilt!). We are in early southern hemisphere fall and about to enter the “aphelion cloud belt” season on Mars. This is the cloudiest time of year on Mars, and we soon expect to see clouds filling our atmospheric movies and cloud shadows on the upper reaches of Mt. Sharp. We’ll start intensive monitoring of clouds beginning this upcoming weekend.

SAM successfully analyzed the “Bardou” drill sample delivered to the instrument over the weekend, and the team was sufficiently satisfied with the results to decide we could begin the process of wrapping up our activities at the drill site and continue our climb up Mount Sharp. The main activity in today’s plan is “portion to exhaustion” where we clear out the sample in the drill stem. Before that effort, though, the team planned a full line up of remote observations of our surroundings. ChemCam planned two large RMI mosaics on the sulfate-bearing buttes towering over our future drive path further up "Mount Sharp." Previous Mastcam mosaics of these buttes have provided tantalizing peeks at stratigraphy within the peaks, and RMI will give us a slightly clearer picture of the layers and structures seen by Mastcam. Mastcam will acquire an 80+ image mosaic of the bedrock we crossed on our way up to Bardou, helping us build a fuller picture of the stratigraphy that makes up “Mont Mercou.” Mastcam will also peer inside a rock that Curiosity broke when settling in at the Bardou site. The image above is a grayscale Mastcam image of a bedrock slab broken by the wheels, with many fresh faces exposed. Mastcam will acquire a multispectral observation of the most prominent of the broken faces, dubbed “Tour Blanche,” a nod to the relatively white color of the fresh faces, at least compared to the rusty red surroundings! The team is excited to add these observations while at the same time looking uphill toward our next adventure!

It is always fun when we begin a planning day and the pre-planned activities get changed. Today was one of those days. The data we were expecting from the previous sol had not arrived at the start of planning, which happens from time to time. We could not be sure that all the previous activities had executed as planned. These activities included the first CheMin mineralogical analysis of the “Bardou” drill sample, the preliminary results of which the SAM team ideally like to see prior to accepting sample to their instrument. While discussing alternative activities for this plan just in case we never received the data, surprise, enough of the data began showing up to allow the original planned drop off to and analysis by SAM to proceed. I am always impressed with how adaptable and capable our team is on a day like this.

As well as the SAM EGA analysis of the Bardou sample, the weekend plan is full of imaging activities utilizing both the ChemCam RMI and Mastcam cameras. Mastcam will acquire mosaics to document a number of sand-filled cracks here on top of Mont Mercou (“Villamblard,” “Queyssac” and “Sabouret”), as well as an image of the Bardou drill hole and surrounding powder. Another of these sand-filled cracks (“Cherval”) will be imaged with the ChemCam RMI.

Parked on top of Mont Mercou gives Curiosity a spectacular vantage point to survey both the terrain we have driven over and future areas of interest. Based on orbital signatures, we are expecting to encounter a transition from relatively clay-rich to sulfate-rich rocks as Curiosity continues to climb Mount Sharp. This may signify an environmental change on Mars, and imaging will help us to monitor this transition and provide context for future exploration. ChemCam will acquire a long distance RMI mosaic pointed towards “Chavagnac,” within the sulfate-bearing unit behind the rover, to the south.

Environmental monitoring will include a Mastcam tau pointed towards the sun at different times of day, Mastcam crater rim extinction imaging to look for dust and Mastcam documentation of the edge of the Mont Mercou cliff. Navcam will also acquire images to monitor dust activity in the atmosphere and to investigate dust devil activity. Standard RAD, REMS and DAN activities are also planned.

As the APXS strategic planning representative today we had no activities. We are excited to analyze the chemistry of the Bardou drilled sample in upcoming plans, before driving away.

Drilling is always exciting, and the image above shows our 31^st drill hole, named ‘Bardou.’ Have a look at yester-sol’s blog, where it also features prominently and was shown from a hazard camera perspective, tosol the image is from the left navigation camera. Can you spot the tiny hole? It’s just 0.6 inch in diameter, and I find it fascinating how structured the surface looks. There is a lot to see here, some things seem to be cross-cutting each other, which is always interesting. But it would be way too early to make any interpretation at this point. For now, we are looking forward to learning all about the mineralogy and chemistry of the sample. The next instruments to investigate it will therefore be SAM and CheMin, and CheMin will receive its sample in today’s plan.

While the chemical laboratory is busy with the preparation to measure this new sample, the cameras are continuing to look at the interesting features all around. ChemCam is peeking into the distance at what is mapped from orbit as the sulfate unit, to investigate textures in the units Curiosity will encounter in the future. Mastcam has a large mosaic in the plan to investigate the sedimentary structures around "Mont Mercou." In addition, there are environmental monitoring activities, looking at atmospheric opacity, dust devils and the clouds.

We had a great morning on Curiosity planning today because we were greeted by an image of our newest drill hole, “Bardou!” Bardou is Curiosity’s 31^st drilled sample, and for those of you keeping score at home, it’s also the 16^th sample collected using our modified drilling technique and the seventh sample we’ve drilled while on entirely remote ops. Wowza.

Planning today was aided by a large “power gift” we received when it took less power to drill into the soft rock than we had anticipated. With all the extra energy, the team decided to have an extended remote sensing science block that included observations of the composition of the atmosphere using ChemCam, ChemCam passive spectra on the drill tailings, a Mastcam multispectral image of the drill tailings, and a Mastcam stereo mosaic of interesting textures nearby the rover. When we’re done with all of this remote sensing, Curiosity will drop portions of the drilled sample onto the closed SAM inlet cover so we can study the drilled material and prepare to deliver it to CheMin and SAM later this week. I’m looking forward to seeing what we find up here on top of "Mont Mercou!"

Congratulations to the Perseverance and Ingenuity teams on the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. This technology demonstration opens up new and exciting possibilities for the future of planetary exploration.

Meanwhile at Gale crater Curiosity is preparing to attempt drilling hole #31 (“Bardou”) on Mars, a feat we thought might not be possible more than 4 years ago when a key part of the drill stopped working. However, the perseverance, ingenuity and hard work of the JPL team meant that a work around was devised to enable drilling on Mars to resume more than a year later. We have since drilled a further 15 holes, doubling our inventory! Analysis of the “Bardou” drilled sample by CheMin, SAM and other instruments will help us to understand the transition from the clay-bearing rocks that we have been investigating in "Glen Torridon," to the overlying sulfate-bearing rocks that we are soon to encounter.

Power was low coming into this plan, and because the drilling activities consume a lot of power, there were no other science activities planned. Instead, the geology and environmental planning groups focused on desired activities in the upcoming plans and for the longer term.

As the APXS payload uplink/downlink and strategic planning representative today it was a relatively quiet day for me. I reported on the downlink and the health of the APXS instrument, but while drilling we are not able to deploy the APXS, which is also on the end of the arm. However, we did use the APXS data already acquired in this area to help inform the discussion of what we would like to do after drilling.

We will hopefully have confirmation of a new drill hole on Mars tomorrow!