Blogs

Blogs
Earth planning date: Wednesday, July 17, 2024 We started our day at an outcrop called “Fairview Dome,” a light-colored rock so big that it can easily be seen from orbit! We have had our eye on Fairview Dome since Curiosity descended into the Gediz Vallis channel. As a geologist who has spent a lot of […]
Posted July 19, 2024
Blogs
Earth planning date: Friday, July 12, 2024 Curiosity, now heading uphill from the Mammoth Lakes drill site, has focused on a very interesting exposure of conglomerate rocks, consisting of pebbles cemented together by a fine-grained matrix material.
Posted July 16, 2024
Blogs
Earth planning date: Wednesday, July 10, 2024 Curiosity is currently trekking across Gediz Vallis channel because, as my nephew’s favorite book says, if we can’t go around it… we’ve got to go through it!
Posted July 13, 2024
Blogs
Earth planning date: Monday, July 8, 2024 And just like we planned, Curiosity successfully drove about 11 meters (about 36 feet) after a 27-sol drill campaign at Mammoth Lakes! Not so fast, though, these rocks are just too interesting to leave behind so quickly. Instead of high-tailing it uphill like we usually do after a […]
Posted July 10, 2024
Blogs
Earth planning date: Friday, July 5, 2024 Curiosity will drive away from the Mammoth Lakes drill location on the second sol of this three-sol weekend plan, but before she does, the team will take the opportunity for one last chance at contact science in this interesting region of the Gediz Vallis deposit. The team have […]
Posted July 6, 2024
Blogs
Earth Planning Date: Wednesday, July 3, 2024 We received the data from our SAM analysis of the Mammoth Lakes sample late Monday afternoon. After chewing over the results, the team declared we are very happy with all of the analyses we’ve done with this sample, and we are ready to move on to greener pastures… […]
Posted July 4, 2024
Blogs
Earth planning date: Monday, July 1, 2024 Have you ever wondered what it might look like to ride along with the rover? Probably not as much as we have here on the planning team, where we are looking at the images on a daily basis. I always wish I could walk around there myself, or […]
Posted July 2, 2024
Blogs
Earth Planning Date: Friday, June 28, 2024 After reviewing results from the Evolved Gas Analysis (EGA) experiment that were downlinked yesterday afternoon (Sols 4226-4228: A Powerful Balancing Act), the SAM team decided they’d like to go ahead with a second experiment to analyze the Mammoth Lakes 2 drilled sample.
Posted July 2, 2024
Blogs
Earth planning date: Tuesday, June 25, 2024 As documented in a previous blog last week, we continue to juggle power constraints as we focus on analyzing our newest drilled sample on Mars: “Mammoth Lakes 2.” Today, the star of the show is a planned dropoff to SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars instrument suite) and evolved […]
Posted June 28, 2024
Blogs
Upon the rover’s arrival at Bright Angel, it was so exciting to see all the interesting features in the rocks of this interval! In particular, these rocks contain an abundance of veins and nodules. Veins are linear features containing mineral crystals that often form thin plates or sheets that cut through the rocks and across […]
Posted June 28, 2024
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