mars rover
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NASA
Sols 4307-4308: Bright Rocks Catch Our Eyes
Earth planning date: Monday, Sept. 16, 2024 We made good progress through Gediz Vallis in the weekend drive, landing in a segment of the channel containing a mix of loose rubble and other channel-filling debris. Amongst the jumbled scene, though, particular objects of interest caught our eye: bright rocks. In past workspaces in Gediz Vallis, similar bright rocks have been…
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NASA
Sols 4304-4006: 12 Years, 42 Drill Holes, and Now… 1 Million ChemCam Shots!
Earth planning date: Friday, Sept. 13, 2024 Today, I need to talk about ChemCam, our laser and imaging instrument on the top of Curiosity’s mast. It one of the instruments in the “head” that gives Curiosity that cute look as if it were looking around tilting its head down to the rocks at the rover’s wheels. On Monday, 19th August the…
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NASA
Sols 4302-4303: West Side of Upper Gediz Vallis, From Tungsten Hills to the Next Rocky Waypoint
Earth planning date: Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024 The rover is on its way from the Tungsten Hills site to the next priority site for Gediz Vallis channel exploration, in which we plan to get in close enough for arm science to one of the numerous large dark-toned “float” blocks in the channel and also to one of the light-toned slabs.…
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NASA
Sols 4287-4288: Back on the Road
Earth planning date: Monday, Aug. 26, 2024 Today’s planning day was a good example of how our team comes together to make quick decisions based on new information and science priorities. The original intent of today’s plan was to perform contact science on some interesting bright-toned rubbly rocks in our workspace, seen in the image above. These rocks were just…
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NASA
Perseverance Kicks off the Crater Rim Campaign!
Perseverance is officially headed into a new phase of scientific investigation on the Jezero Crater rim! For the last 2 months, the Perseverance rover has been exploring the Neretva Vallis region of Jezero Crater, where rocks with interesting popcorn-like textures and “leopard spot” patterns have fascinated us all. Now, the rover has begun its long ascent up the crater rim, and is officially…
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NASA
Sols 4268-4269: Admiring Kings Canyon
Earth planning date: Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024 Curiosity is admiring our latest drill hole, “Kings Canyon.” Today’s plan is dedicated to continuing analysis of the drilled sample, including preconditioning for SAM evolved gas analysis (EGA) scheduled for the weekend. In planning today, the environmental (ENV), and the geology and mineralogy (GeoMin) theme groups planned two days of science observations. The…
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NASA
Sols 4261-4262: Drill Sol 1…Take 2
Earth planning date: Wednesday, July 31, 2024 As Cat mentioned on Monday, today’s plan is a second attempt at our Drill Sol 1 activities. We’ve shifted the target on Kings Canyon a little bit, but the activities remain the same — a preload test to ensure that we’re able to safely drill here, and contact science to get a preview of what…
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NASA
Sols 4255-4256: Just Passing Through
Earth planning date: Wednesday, July 24, 2024 Happy Wednesday, terrestrials! We wrapped up our Mammoth Lakes drill campaign only three weeks ago and are already looking for our next drill site. This will be the last drill campaign in the Gediz Vallis region, an area on Mars the Curiosity team has had their eyes on since sol 0, just under 12 years ago!…
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NASA
Sols 4243-4245: Exploring Stubblefield Canyon
Earth planning date: Friday, July 12, 2024 Curiosity, now heading uphill from the Mammoth Lakes drill site, has focused on a very interesting exposure of conglomerate rocks, consisting of pebbles cemented together by a fine-grained matrix material. On Earth, conglomerate rock is associated with downhill flows of rock and soil mixtures, often in a water-rich environment, so our science team…
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Here’s How AI Is Changing NASA’s Mars Rover Science
Artificial intelligence is helping scientists to identify minerals within rocks studied by the Perseverance rover. Some scientists dream of exploring planets with “smart” spacecraft that know exactly what data to look for, where to find it, and how to analyze it. Although making that dream a reality will take time, advances made with NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover offer promising steps…
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