~25 cm standoff MAHLI image of the Glen Etive 1 drill hole. The hole is ~1.6 cm diameter. This image is being used to place APXS on the tailings surrounding the hole in the plan tosol.

The focus of Curiosity's activities since returning to operations after conjunction, now that Mars has safely moved out from behind the sun, is to finish up the analyses associated with the drilling campaign at "Glen Etive 1." Yestersol we planned to dump drill fines from the drill bit assembly (DBA) and the analyses of those fines with APXS (for chemistry) and MAHLI (for close up colour and texture), as well as obtaining MAHLI images of the drill hole and associated fines surrounding the hole (tailings). The MAHLI images of the drill tailings allowed us to choose the best location on the tailings to analyze with APXS in the plan tosol. We are interested in comparing the chemistry of the tailings, versus the DBA fines, versus the brushed surface prior to drilling to look for variations in composition with depth. We may have intersected different layers during drilling; the tailings are typically derived from the top 2 cm of the drill hole, while the DBA fines are derived from the lower several cms. More MAHLI imaging of the the drill hole was also planned, including angled night time imaging down the hole to look for any obvious layering or veins. In the Payload Uplink/Downlink role for the APXS instrument tosol, I was involved in helping to select where to place APXS, working with the rover arm engineers at JPL in Pasadena, as well as being responsible for delivering the commands to our instrument to execute the measurement.

Because the current, as well as upcoming activities require substantial power the geology group decided not to plan any further science observations tosol, thereby conserving power. However, the environmental group planned the normal cadence of background REMS and DAN passive measurements. Standard RAD measurements were also planned.

The team is looking forward to wrapping up here at Glen Etive 1 and drilling another hole close by to enable a more detailed study of this material with the internal rover laboratory instruments, CheMin and SAM.

[[MODULE||videos.video||ParseModule=No&v=122]] See this video for an explanation of conjunction: Conjunction explanation ›

Today is our first planning sol following solar conjunction. For the past few weeks, Mars and Earth have been on opposite sides of the Sun, preventing routine communications with Curiosity. Our rover spent most of the time sleeping, with some routine environmental monitoring with REMS and RAD and occasional Hazcam images like the one shown. The image shows that we're still parked at our "Glen Etive" drill location where today we planned the 6th sol of our 8-sol drill campaign.

The primary activity for today's plan was to dump the remaining powdered rock sample that we collected when drilling Glen Etive and then use APXS to analyze the small dump pile overnight. The GEO and ENV theme groups also planned a variety of activities to catch up on how things may have changed in the last few weeks. This included looking at the drill hole with Mastcam to see if the drill tailings might have blown away or been moved by the wind, getting measurements of atmospheric dust opacities and clouds with Mastcam and Navcam, and doing some routine instrument calibration activities. ChemCam will also target two new rock targets, "Cowgate" and "Glenlivet," to continue to document the geochemical diversity in the area.

Today was the final opportunity to actively command Curiosity before the Sun comes between us and Mars. Most of the instruments are safely stored for the solar conjunction break, but intrepid Navcam was available for some last-minute science observations. Navcam will measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere, look for dust devils, and look for clouds in a series of images and movies on Sol 2506. After that, the remote sensing mast will turn its gaze down toward the workspace to guard against dust accumulation on the mast instruments.

While Curiosity will not receive commands from Earth during solar conjunction, she has already been loaded with a series of commands to keep her systematically gathering data for the next two weeks. REMS and RAD will acquire multiple measurements each sol, DAN will acquire one long passive measurement each sol, and Navcam and the front and rear Hazcams will each acquire one image per day. The mast's downward-looking view includes the "Glen Etive" drill hole, allowing Navcam to monitor any changes in the cuttings around the drill hole. DAN will also acquire active measurements twice during solar conjunction to exercise its neutron generator. The data gathered will be stored up for return once we regain reliable communications with Mars.

Just as solar conjunction is not time off for Curiosity, it is not time off for the science team! Without the responsibilities of commanding the rover, the team has more time to pore over the spectacular data Curiosity has gathered for us. It takes time to translate each image, mosaic, and spectrum into a better understanding of what happened in Gale crater, and conjunction affords us more of this time to think deeply and carefully. Ultimately, the time dedicated to science turns into papers, which are one of the many ways the science team communicates what it has learned with our colleagues and the wider public.

If you miss Curiosity while she is out of contact, enjoy your own tour through all our images here. We promise there is enough to see there to get you through two weeks!

The days leading up to a big trip can be hectic. There are preparations to be made, belongings to be packed, extra work to do in anticipation of being away from the computer. And it's no different for a robot on the surface of Mars. With solar conjunction quickly approaching, the team is focused on getting the rover prepared for its journey behind the sun, during which time all communications between Earth and the rover will cease. Today the team was faced with the interesting challenge of having to fit all the activities that needed to be completed before conjunction in the limited time available before the rover had to start 'packing up' its instruments for the two-week hiatus. When planning began, the science team was informed that we would not be allowed to use Mastcam or ChemCam after the first sol, in order to get those instruments turned off and into a safe position before solar conjunction began. This placed a constraint on what activities could be included in the plan and when they could be included; a plan that originally included three science blocks spread over two sols quickly shrank into one massive science block on the first sol, jam-packed with all the activities that need to be done to get the rover into vacation mode.

The science block included various geologic observations, such as Mastcam multispectral images of a fractured rock and some potential meteorites named "Stone Row," as well as two ChemCam activities on targets "Windy Swire" and "Wigtownshire." In anticipation of post-conjunction activities, a Navcam image was also included to gather range data on a group of shadowed rocks nearby. Four different targets will be imaged by Mastcam to monitoring wind activity: two sand targets (Dundee 1 and Dundee 2), the rover deck, and a sediment pile around the drill hole. Since Navcam will remain partially operational during conjunction, the rover will also continue to monitor wind on its own throughout the break by repeating the image shown above once per sol to see if any material moves around in the workspace while we are away. Today's science plan also included a set of Mastcam and Navcam observations used for studying atmospheric phenomena like clouds and dust lifting.

The science block concluded with a Mastcam homing sequence, which will stow the camera in a safe position in preparation for the two-week break. We still have one more pre-conjunction planning day on Friday, but with limited instrumentation, it is looking like it will be a very quiet one. With all of our required science activities complete, and our instruments powering down, we should be almost ready for our journey behind the sun! But wait… where did we put our passport?!

The Sol 2502-2503 plan starts with a couple of ChemCam observations on the bedrock targets "Papigoe" and "Princes Street," followed by a Mastcam stereo mosaic of "Stone Row." Then in the afternoon of Sol 2502, Curiosity will portion out all the sample material from the "Glen Etive" drill hole that remains in the drill stem, in an activity called "portion to exhaustion," taking plenty of Mastcam images to document the process. Sol 2502 will end with an overnight APXS atmospheric observation.

On Sol 2503, ChemCam has some more activities, starting with an analysis of the bedrock target "Macbeth's Cairn." This will be followed by an autonomously targeted observation of some of the bright veins in the bedrock target "Lamlash." ChemCam will finish up with an observation of some layers in the target "Prince Charlie's Cave." Mastcam will document all of these ChemCam observations and then Navcam will watch for dust devils and clouds. Finally, overnight CheMin will run another analysis of the "Glen Etive" drill sample.

This plan leaves our rover lower on power than originally planned, but with conjunction coming up, the team decided it was worth it to get all of this science done.

Conjunction is the few-week period when Mars goes behind the sun and we stop communicating with our spacecraft that are there. Our last planning day before conjunction will be next Friday, and thinking about that fast approaching day feels very similar to thinking about getting ready to leave for vacation. The Curiosity science team has many things we want to wrap up before conjunction, so we're trying to work extra hard to do as much as we can before setting up Curiosity's (figurative) auto-reply "I'm behind the sun" email.

This weekend's plan is all about running additional SAM analyses on the Glen Etive drill sample. We are planning to deliver a portion of the drill sample to SAM on lucky sol 2500, and SAM will analyze its composition using the gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer (GC-MS) on sol 2501. This SAM activity is preceded by an activity to clean the GC column on sol 2499, and the combined observations use so much power, there's not a lot left for other activities. We did manage to fit in a little bit of remote sensing, taking two ChemCam targets of "Sutherland" and "Risk" with their associated Mastcam images, along with some images to monitor dust in the atmosphere. Looking forward to seeing the results from this weekend's SAM run!

This morning, after seeing that the redo of the SAM Preconditioning in Monday's plan was successful, the SAM team was ready to drop-off four portions to SAM for evolved gas analysis. The power demands of SAM left little room for other activities on the first sol of the plan, but we were able to fit in some additional science on the second sol. In the afternoon of sol 2498, we'll be doing targeted science, including Mastcam and ChemCam, of the targets "Liberton" and "Torberg" to get the chemistry of the other plates near the drill target. There are also some standard environmental observations, such as Mastcam tau and crater rim extinction imaging and Navcam imaging to search for dust devils clouds. We also, on the second sol, are getting another data readout from CheMin on the sample we dropped off on Monday. The results of the SAM analysis will be available prior to planning on Friday, and based on those results, the SAM team will determine whether to do additional analysis on the Glen Etive drill sample in the weekend plan. The attached Navcam image shows the view of the Mount Sharp summit from our current location.

It's the end of another week on Mars, and today we put together a 3 sol weekend plan for Curiosity. Given the RSM-related issues that we incurred this past week, we are still being cautious, but the diagnostic testing that ran in the last plan was successful.
To exercise that caution, we began planning this morning with a little shuffle of science blocks to ensure that any observations that have the RSM pointing above the horizon are run prior to last the satellite communications pass that will transmit data to the team in time for planning on Monday morning.

Our plan begins with a hefty two hour science block on the first sol that features both a Mastcam tau and crater rim extinction observation to measure the amount of dust and clouds in the atmosphere. The Mastcam images are then followed by two alternating ChemCam LIBS and RMI observations of bedrock and crushed rock (targets "Glen Affric" and "Grey Corries," respectively). The science block wraps up with some Mastcam images of the drill target "Glen Etive," and change detection imaging on the target "Dundee," which captures how various regolith grains move over time and can even be used as a method for measuring wind speed.

Later in the first sol, there is a drill sample drop off to CheMin followed by an overnight CheMin analysis. During this analysis the instrument transmits a beam of X-rays through one side of the vibrating sample cell and captures an X-ray diffraction pattern on a detector on the other side, and that resulting pattern can be used to determine the types and abundances of minerals in the sample.After the CheMin analysis, Curiosity wakes up the next morning on Sol 2493 to execute the weekly suite of morning observations requested by the Environmental Science theme group. This 37 minute block consists of another set of Mastcam tau and crater rim extinction observations, as well as Navcam zenith and supra-horizon cloud movies which search for clouds directly above the rover and the horizon. These are followed by a Navcam line of sight observation which looks at the crater rim to measure dust opacity, and then a Navcam 360° Phase Function Sky Survey, which tries to capture as much of the sky at once as possible, in order to tell us more about how Martian water ice clouds scatter light and the geometries of the ice crystals within them.

Curiosity largely takes the rest of the plan to recharge and take regular environmental observations with REMS and DAN, with the exception of a 10 minute science block on sol 2494 for some Mastcam imaging of potential iron meteorite targets "Isle Martin" and "Monach Isles."

Today's planning began with a bit of a shuffle as we learned that the sample cup that was used for SAM preconditioning over the weekend didn't seal as well as desired. This preconditioning step is required before we can perform SAM Evolved Gas Analysis (EGA) on the "Glen Etive" drill sample. In response, we elected to redo the SAM preconditioning activity using another cup, in addition to running another CheMin analysis. These changes freed up additional time for remote sensing observations in this 2 sol plan.

We planned a variety of ChemCam observations, including a retargeting of the Glen Etive drill hole in order to better adjust the focus parameters. We identified a rock called "Scone" with nicely exposed layers that we will sample with a vertical raster, and will also target another bedrock target called "Crannog." There was also time to take a long distance RMI mosaic of the sulfate unit to image sedimentary structures in these distant rocks. Supporting Mastcam documentation images were planned for each of these observations, as well as Navcam movies designed for determining cloud height. If all goes well with the redo of the SAM preconditioning, we'll be continuing along the drill sol path in no time!

A Rear Hazcam image used for dust devil monitoring.

Over the weekend, Curiosity successfully dropped off a portion of the Glen Etive drill sample. But for some reason, the sequence was interrupted, so no images of the portion were acquired. Curiosity's Remote Sensing Mast (RSM), on which ChemCam, both Mastcams, and all four Navcams are mounted, briefly stopped pointing as commanded on sol 2488. The RSM worked well in the tests planned on sol 2489 and downlinked ahead of today's planning, however. So while the engineers continue to diagnose the issue, such as whether it involves recent changes to the way we heat motors connected to the RSM, we used it again cautiously in the sol 2490 plan. This meant avoiding observations that require us to look up from the surface or deck, to avoid any risk of dust piling up on lenses if the RSM became stuck there.

The net result was that most of the ENV Science Theme Group's cloud and dust monitoring activities could not be included, as all of them involve using Mastcam or Navcam to look near the horizon or higher up. In the sol 2489 plan, we included some attempted dust devil imaging using the Rear Hazcams, but in today's plan we focused on adding extra REMS one-hour extended blocks to measure air and ground temperature, pressure, humidity, and UV radiation. This should result in us measuring over 37 of the 48 Mars hours contained in this two-sol plan, compared to the 13 hours we'd have measured usually, including seven periods with 5 hours of continuous REMS. Long periods of continuous atmospheric data are useful for tracking weather patterns, atmospheric wave activity, and even clouds that we can detect in the REMS UV and ground temperature data after sunset. The ENV group also planned DAN active and RAD observations.

Meanwhile, the GEO Science Theme Group planned to recover yesterday's planned observations, which were lost due to the RSM issue. Because delivery of the Glen Etive sample to the SAM inlet cover and documentation imaging did not complete, the highest priority for the sol 2490 plan was to perform the SAM drop-off and do ChemCam LIBS observations of the drill hole. Other activities were ChemCam and Mastcam observations of a single rock target "Argyll," consisting of dark bedrock with a white vein, of "Dornock" and "Thrumster," both containing sulfate veins, and of "Tap O Noth," a nearby bedrock target.

Finally, further Mastcam imaging was performed to monitor any surface changes that may occur as a result of strong winds or intense atmospheric vortices that are able to move sand and/or dust particles. Targets of this imaging included the rover deck as well as images of two surface targets called "Dundee 1" and "Dundee 2." These targets were chosen because they contain both sand and bedrock, which makes it easier to spot small changes between images, such as sand shifting slightly further onto the rock. These 'change detection' studies are repeated at roughly equal intervals over the Mars year, and help us to understand how sand motion and dust lifting varies with season, which in turn helps us to understand how dunes form, how the surface is eroded, and how dust storms occur.