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Sols 4212-4214: Gearing up to Drill

June 14th, 2024 Amelie Roberts
Sols 4212-4214: Gearing up to Drill!
This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4210 and captures the block which hosts our potential drill target, "Mammoth Lakes." Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Curiosity is gearing up to drill! Recently, it encountered a rock with unusual coloration and texture that was just out of reach.

So that Curiosity could learn more about the geology around these rocks, it "bumped"—completing a 0.7-meter drive (2.3 feet)—to reach a nearby rock that's big enough to drill. After many discussions with engineers, geologists, chemists, and more, the team has confirmed this target will be the next potential drill target. They've chosen the target name "Mammoth Lakes," named for a town in California's Sierra Nevada mountains with basalt columns, hot springs, and waterfalls.

As the Keeper of the Plan for the Geology and Mineralogy theme group, Ph.D. candidate at Imperial College London, Amelie Roberts has been busy recording all the necessary observations into the plan as they prepare to drill.

In the first sol, they will start with some essential preparatory activities. A Dust Removal Tool (DRT) will be used to clean the surface, they will take detailed images with the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to capture the sedimentary textures, and analyze the composition with the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS). These steps are crucial to understand the site's potential before they commit to drilling.

The second sol is where things heat up. ChemCam will fire up its Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) to zap the rock and analyze its makeup. They will then follow up this activity with imaging the surrounding area to help us understand the context of "Mammoth Lakes."

Mastcam will devote half an hour to capture a mammoth mosaic of the area, showing a potential contact in Gediz Vallis ridge which is marked by a transition from white stones into a coarser material.

Finally they will use the ChemCam's Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) to get some high-res shots of the sedimentary textures and structures within the surrounding rocks to understand the depositional environment when they formed.

Even with all these activities, the environmental science theme group managed to fit in some dust monitoring.

Provided by NASA

Citation: Sols 4212-4214: Gearing up to Drill (2024, June 14) retrieved 18 June 2024 from https://sciencex.com/wire-news/479797222/sols-4212-4214-gearing-up-to-drill.html
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