The drive planned last weekend completed successfully, moving MSL
less than 6 meters into position for contact science on the rocks broken
by the rover wheels .
Planning is restricted this week, so we are planning 2 sols’ worth of
activities. The first sol (1344) includes a “touch and go” that
requires extra Rover Planner staffing, as both arm activities and a
drive are planned. It’s great to be able to do so much in one plan, but
we had to cram a lot of stuff into Sol 1344 because the drive
has to be completed before the afternoon MRO communications relay to
allow another drive to be planne d on Wednesd ay.
So we had to decide which scientific observations were most important
and work to fit them into the plan. I helped select a target for a
ChemCam observation of “Impalila,” one of the freshly-exposed rock
surfaces, and was glad to see that it made it into the plan. Mastcam
will acquire a multispectral observation of the broken rocks before
MAHLI takes pictures of “Stampriet,” Impalila, “Narubis,” and
“Swartmodder.” As I mentioned in my previous blog, it’s difficult to
get MAHLI close to these targets, so the camera will be placed no closer
than 5 cm from any of the targets; we can’t get any closer than 25 cm
to Swartmodder. After MAHLI imaging is completed and the arm stowed,
the rover will drive toward the west, hopefully getting back to the Sol
1311 location, where the rover was before we decided to return to the
Lubango area.
Sol 1345 observations cannot be
targeted because they will be taken after the drive, so ChemCam and
Mastcam will perform routine sky measurements. That’s it! by Ken Herkenhoff Dates of planned rover activities described in these reports are subject to change due to a variety of factors related to the Martian environment, communication relays and rover status.
