Sol 4553: Back to the Boxwork!

por admin | 30 mayo, 2025 - 12:02 am |30 mayo, 2025 Astronomy

Sol 4553: Back to the Boxwork!

2 min read

Sol 4553: Back to the Boxwork!

A grayscale photograph of Martian terrain in front of the Curiosity rover shows very bumpy, uneven ground with large, polygonal sections of rock on the surface separated by gouges in the soil. The bumpy area and a smoother patch just beyond that all appear shiny. The bottom of the frame shows parts of the rover, running from the middle left edge to the lower right corner of the image, including part of its robotic arm which carries a nameplate imprinted with “Curiosity” outlined in white, all-capital letters, and to the right of that a line drawing of the rover.

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of its workspace in the “boxwork” terrain area, showing resistant, ridge-like features where it will investigate the targets dubbed “Sisquoc River” and “Palo Verde Mountains.” Curiosity acquired the image using its Left Navigation Camera on May 27, 2025 — Sol 4552, or Martian day 4,552 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 08:38:12 UTC.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Written by Lucy Thompson, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick

Earth planning date: Tuesday, May 27, 2005

We return to planning today after a successful long weekend and about 42 meters of drive distance (about 138 feet). We planned four sols of activities on Friday to keep Curiosity busy, while the U.S.-based science team and engineers took time off yesterday for the Memorial Day holiday. As we got to admire the new workspace and drive direction view in front of the rover this morning, I realized that we have now driven about 35 kilometers (about 22 miles) and climbed more than 850 meters (2,789 feet) in elevation since landing nearly 13 years ago, and we continue to do exciting science on Mars, having recently driven onto new terrain.

The so-called boxwork structures are a series of resistant ridges observed both from orbit and in long-distance rover imaging (see Ashley’s blog here). Not only are the ridges of interest (do they indicate enhanced fluid-flow and cementation?), but the outcrop expression in general changed after we drove over a shallow trough onto the rocks that host the ridges.

This plan will continue characterization of the interesting boxwork terrain. We had an example of a more resistant, ridge-like feature in our workspace today (see accompanying image). The composition of the ridge will be investigated using ChemCam (target “Sisquoc River”) and APXS (target “Palo Verde Mountains”), with accompanying Mastcam and MAHLI images. We will also acquire Mastcam imaging of a trough-like feature surrounding a bedrock slab, as part of our ongoing documentation of such structures, as well as of an apparent resistant boxwork ridge in the distance (“Lake Cachuma”). And a first for our mission, we are planning the longest-distance ChemCam remote imaging mosaic that we will have acquired — 91 kilometers (almost 57 miles) away! The intent is to compare the long-distance view from the ground with HiRISE orbital images in an attempt to create a 3D view. We also managed to squeeze in a Navcam large dust-devil survey before the planned 24-meter drive (about 79 feet). Once we arrive at our new location, MARDI will take an image of the terrain beneath the rover.

The plan is rounded out with the standard REMS, DAN and RAD activities.

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May 29, 2025

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A Dust Devil Photobombs Perseverance!

por admin | 30 mayo, 2025 - 12:01 am |30 mayo, 2025 Astronomy

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A Dust Devil Photobombs Perseverance!

3 min read

A Dust Devil Photobombs Perseverance!

NASA’s Perseverance rover takes a selfie on the surface of Mars with a faint dust devil swirling in the background.

Perseverance self portrait, acquired by the WATSON camera on Sol 1500 on Mars. The Bell Island borehole where the rover acquired a sample is visible in the workspace in front of the rover.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Written by Athanasios Klidaras, Ph.D. candidate at Purdue University, and Megan Kennedy Wu, Senior Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems

To celebrate her 1,500^th Martian day (“Sol”) exploring the red planet, the Perseverance rover used its robotic arm to take a selfie of the rover and the surrounding landscape. But when team members reviewed the photo, they were surprised to find that Perseverance had been photobombed!

As the rover sat at the “Pine Pond” workspace, located on the outer rim of Jezero crater, which it has been exploring for the past several months, the Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering (WATSON) camera on the end of its arm was used to acquire a 59-image mosaic of the rover. This is the fifth “selfie” that Perseverance has acquired since landing on Mars in 2021. The rover’s robotic arm is not visible in the self portrait because — just like a selfie you would take with your own cellphone camera — rover operators make sure not to have the arm get “in the way” of the body of the rover. This is even easier to do on Mars because Perseverance needs to take 59 different images at slightly different arm positions to build up the selfie, and the elbow of the robotic arm is kept out of the way while the images are acquired. You can find more details about the Sol 1500 selfie here, and this YouTube video shows how the rover arm moves when these activities take place.

While snapping away, Perseverance was photobombed by a dust devil in the distance! These are relatively common phenomena both on Mars and in Earth’s desert regions, and form from rising and rotating columns of warm air, which gives the appearance of a dust tornado. Just like many other weather patterns, there is a peak “season” for dust-devil activity, and Jezero crater is in the peak of that season now (late northern spring). The one seen in the selfie is fairly large, about 100 meters, or 328 feet, across. While Perseverance regularly monitors the horizon for dust-devil activity with Navcam movies, this is the first time the WATSON camera on the end of the robotic arm has ever captured an image of a dust devil!

The dark hole in front of the rover, surrounded by gray rock powder created during the drilling process, shows the location of Perseverance’s 26^th sample. Nicknamed “Bell Island” after an island near Newfoundland, Canada, this rock sample contains small spherules, thought to have formed by volcanic eruptions or impacts early in Martian history. Later, this ancient rock was uplifted during the impact that formed Jezero crater. Now that the rover has successfully acquired the spherule sample the science team was searching for, Perseverance is leaving the area to explore new rock exposures. Last week, the rover arrived at an exposure of light-toned bedrock called “Copper Cove,” and the science team was interested to determine if this unit underlies or overlies the rock sequence explored earlier. After performing an abrasion to get a closer look at the chemistry and textures, the rover drove south to scout out more sites along the outer edge of the Jezero crater rim.

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May 29, 2025

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