NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity captures beautiful particulars of alien rock formations

Curiosity is within the midst of the boxwork marketing campaign, attempting to decipher why we see such pronounced ridges and hollows on this space of Mount Sharp. When this terrain was first recognized from orbit it was hypothesized that the ridges could also be the results of cementation by circulating fluids, adopted by differential erosion of the much less resistant bedrock in between (the hollows that we now observe).

We have been exploring the boxwork terrain documenting textures, buildings and composition to research potential variations between ridges and hollows. One of the textural options we’ve noticed are nodules in various abundance. The focus of our actions this week was to doc the transition from smoother bedrock atop a boxwork ridge to extra nodular bedrock related to the sting of a shallow hole.

In Tuesday’s three-sol plan we analyzed the smoother bedrock inside the ridge, documenting textures with MAHLI, Mastcam, and ChemCam RMI, and chemistry with ChemCam LIBS and APXS. Curiosity then efficiently bumped in the direction of the sting of the ridge/hole to put the extra nodular bedrock in our workspace. Friday’s three-sol plan was principally a repeat of the earlier observations, however this time centered on the extra nodular bedrock. The deliberate drive ought to take us to a different boxwork ridge, and nearer to the world the place we plan to drill into one of many ridges.

As the APXS strategic planner this week, I helped to pick out the rock targets for evaluation by our instrument, making certain they had been secure to the touch and that they met the science intent of the boxwork marketing campaign. I additionally communicated to the remainder of the staff the newest outcomes from our APXS compositional analyses and the way they match into our investigation of the boxwork terrain. This will assist to tell our fast-approaching choice about the place to drill.

Both plans included Mastcam and ChemCam long-distance RMI imaging of extra distant options, together with different boxwork ridges and hollows, buttes, the yardang unit, and Gale crater rim. Planned environmental actions proceed to watch mud within the ambiance, dust-devil exercise, and clouds. Standard REMS, RAD, and DAN actions spherical out the week’s actions.

Written by Lucy Thompson, Planetary Scientist and APXS Team Member, University of New Brunswick, Canada.