During the day last Wednesday, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover took a long journey with many twists and turns over very rugged terrain, but the team was delighted to learn that everything was completed as planned when they received the transmission during the following morning indicating that everything had gone as planned. The successful drive means that Curiosity is now stationed on the south side of Pinnacle Ridge, the last area of the upper ridge of Gediz Vallis, which mission managers at JPL plan to investigate before crossing the Gediz Vallis channel. Curiosity visited the north side of Pinnacle Ridge last week, collecting all kinds of data that tells us a lot about the composition and textures of the rocks that make up the ridge.
For that reason, mission planners had to make a big decision: Now that we can see that the southern side of Pinnacle Ridge is passable, should we drive over it to obtain additional contact science data on the ridge’s rocks? from Gediz Vallis, or should we continue driving along the Gediz Vallis canal towards our planned canal crossing location? Driving over Pinnacle Ridge at this location could give us the opportunity to learn more about the materials that make up the ridge and the role of water in this area, but it could also take several sols (days) and not tell us much more than we already learned. from our research on the north face of Pinnacle Ridge.
The mission team met to discuss the pros and cons of this decision, and eventually the ~25 scientists who were in the tactical operations planning group came to a consensus decision that moving forward would be preferable to going further. time here.
So, during the day on Friday Curiosity dedicated itself to collecting many Mastcam observations and then continued its path up and along the channel, heading ~23 meters southwest. Before leaving, it also took the opportunity to perform some contact science observations on the rocks at the rover’s feet, performing a DRT followed by APXS and MAHLI observations on a target called “Boyden Cave”, APXS and MAHLI observations on a target nearby (dusty) rock called “Royal Arches”, and finally a MAHLI-only target of a nearby rock called “Quarry Peak”. She also collected two ChemCam LIBS observations of “Otter Lake,” a target very close to Royal Arches, and another nearby rock called “Nevada Falls.” A series of environmental monitoring observations completed the day.
