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Curiosity Entrance Hazcam Left B picture taken on Sol 2434, June 12, 2019.
Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now finishing up Sol 2435 duties.
Experiences Mariah Baker, a planetary geologist at Johns Hopkins College in Baltimore, Maryland: “It’s an excellent factor that Curiosity doesn’t have any competitors on the street as she drives fervently throughout undulating terrain in direction of a big geologic ridge of unknown origin…informally named Waypoint four.”
This Navcam picture acquired on sol 2432 exhibits a number of the rubbly terrain in entrance of Curiosity in addition to the “Waypoint four” ridge we’re driving in direction of (higher proper nook).
Curiosity Navcam Proper B picture acquired on Sol 2432, June 10, 2019.
Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Lengthy drive
Following a protracted 144 toes (44-meter) drive to place the robotic into its present location (on an analogous, however smaller ridge), and two extra drives of 82 toes (25-meters) had been deliberate for this week to place the rover into an excellent vantage level for imaging the facet of the ridge.
Curiosity Navcam Left B picture taken on Sol 2434, June 12, 2019.
Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“However the workforce determined to place the pedal to the metallic and attempt to make it to this ridgeline in only one drive. Ridge options are widespread all through the Glen Torridon unit, so characterizing the morphology and chemical composition of those ridges can place necessary constraints on their formation and on the overarching geologic historical past of this area. This would be the purpose of our investigation at Waypoint four,” Baker says. “Though her present precedence is attending to the big ridge as rapidly as attainable, Curiosity will nonetheless conduct science alongside the way in which.”
Curiosity Navcam Left B picture taken on Sol 2434, June 12, 2019.
Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Finish-of-drive location
Varied contact science and distant sensing observations are deliberate, together with Chemistry and Digital camera Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectrometer (LIBS) on the goal “Portessie,” and Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on course “Smoogro.”
Mastcam stereo photographs will even be acquired on “Portessie” and “Lossie.”
“As soon as these actions have concluded, the rover will begin her prolonged drive over to Waypoint four. Submit-drive imaging, together with commonplace Navcam, Hazcam, and Mastcam mosaics in addition to an prolonged Navcam higher tier mosaic, will assist us assess our end-of-drive location and can present the primary up-close take a look at the ridge in query,” Baker factors out.
Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
Street map
A newly launched map exhibits Curiosity’s traverse by way of Sol 2432.
The map exhibits the route pushed by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity by way of the 2432 Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s mission on Mars (June 10, 2019).
Numbering of the dots alongside the road point out the sol variety of every drive. North is up. The dimensions bar is 1 kilometer (~zero.62 mile).
From Sol 2429 to Sol 2432, Curiosity had pushed a straight line distance of about 112.26 toes (34.22 meters), bringing the rover’s whole odometry for the mission to 12.88 miles (20.73 kilometers).
The bottom picture from the map is from the Excessive Decision Imaging Science Experiment Digital camera (HiRISE) in NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
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