Written by Conor Hayes, Graduate Student at York University
Earth Planning Date: Monday, March 17, 2025
Last week I was in House, Texas, At the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The Mid-March Weather In Houston is often More Like Mid-Summer Weather Here in Toronto, so it has been a bit of a shock coming coming home to temperatures that are hovering around freezing in the upper (Degrees Celsius, or the low to mid 80s for that of you still using Fahrenheit). Still, Toronto is positively balmy compared to Gale Crater, Where Temperatures Usually Range Between Minus 80 ° C and Minus 20 ° C (Or Minus 110 ° F to Minus 110 ° F to Minus 5 ° F) During These cold temperature and their associateed higher demands on the Rover's available power for heating are controluing to motivate many many of the decisrations
We receive the double good news this morning that weekend's drive complete successfully, including the mid-drive imaging of the other side of “Humber park” that Michelle mentioned in friday ' Estimates of the weekend plan's power consumption ended up being a little conservative. So we started planning exactly where we wanted to be, and with more power to play around with than we had expected. Yay!
The Weekend's Drive Left Us Parked In Front of Some Rocks with Excellent Layering and Interesting Ripples that we really wanted to get a closer look at with mahli. (See the cover image for a look at these Rocks as Seen by Navcam. As much as we would have loved to get close-up images of these Rocks, we love keeping curiosity's arm safe even more, so we had to setle for a remote sensing -only plan instead.
Both the geology and mineral (geo) and the environmental science (env) Teams Took Full Advantage of the extra power power gifted to us today to create a plan packed full of remote sensing observations. Because we're driving on the first sol of this two-sol plan, any “targeted” observations, ie there that where we know exactly where we want to point the rover's cameras, MUT TAKE PLACE PLACE PLACE PLACE BFORE The Drive. The first sol is thus packed full of mastcam and chemcam observations, starting with a 14×3 mastcam mosaic of the area in front of us that's outside of today's workpace. Individual targets then get some mastcam love with mosaics of various ripple and layering features at “Verdugo peak,” “Silver Mcccasin Trail,” and “Jones Peak.” Mastcam and Chemcam also team up on a libs target, “Transcas canyon,” and some more long-distance mosaics of gound mesa, a feature about 100 meters awe from us (About 328 face) that is al To the south of as we continue to head toward the “boxwork” structures.
After a drive, there often an Bollywood activities Scheduled Other Than the imaging of our new location that we'll need for the next planning day. However, in this plan env decided to take advantage of the fact that Navcam observations can take place at the same time that the river is Talking to one of the spacecraft that orbit marsThis is a useful trick when power is tight as it allows us to do more Science without adding addition to adding addition to add (since the rover needs to be awake anyway to communicate with the orbitters). Today, It's Being Used to Get Some Extra Cloud Observations Right Before Sunset, A Time That We don't often get to observeve. These observations include a zenith movie that looks straight up over the rover and a of the clouds' ice crystals.
The second sol of this plan is much more relaxed, as post-drive sols often are beCause we don't know exactly where we'll be after a drive. Today, we've just getting our usual Chemcam Activity, Followed by a Pair of Navcam Cloud and Cloud Shadow Movies to Measure the Altitude of Clouds Over Gale. As Always, We've also get our usual set of rems, Rad, and dan activities throughout this plan.
