This morning's planning kicked off with great news! Our Sol 3620 SAM data of the Canaima drill sample was interesting enough to proceed with planning a Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometry (GCMS) experiment. This type of activity is one of SAM's specialties and can help characterize the chemistry of the rock we're parked in front of, including the presence of compounds essential to life as we know it!

Necessary aside: molecular compounds considered essential to life are not biosignatures themselves and many can also be formed from geologic processes. However, planning GCMS on Mars requires a ton of power. The name of the game today was putting the power puzzle pieces together efficiently so we can still have the resources for a full weekend of planning next time (aka more remote sensing time to fill for my Mastcam uplink shift!).

For more SAM context, check out this annotated MAHLI selfie from our Mont Mercou drill campaign back in March 2021, showing what SAM looks like inside the rover and the location of SAM's inlet covers on the rover deck.

For a closer view of SAM's inlet covers, check out this Mastcam Left image of them after some of the Canaima drill sample was dropped off on Sol 3613. Safety trivia fact: while the arm does dynamic activities like dropping off sample to the rover deck, we always make sure the Remote Sensing Mast (RSM) is pointed away to avoid any drill fines blowing into the RSM's many lenses.

Drill fines are, well, finer than the sand/dust in the natural Martian environment and have a higher chance of being blown around. For this reason, we always take Mastcam high-resolution images of the drill hole after drilling and before using MAHLI on the ground again to determine if any drill hole fines have moved around.

Today's plan includes actually opening one of the inlet covers to attempt dropping off the rest of our sample directly into SAM's belly! Assuming all goes well, this is great news for MAHLI since she has been powered off since Drill Sol 2 on Sol 3612.

Between drilling and dropping off the full sample, MAHLI/APXS ground activities are always precluded since the drill needs to be kept at a fixed orientation to avoid spillage. So as part of the MAHLI uplink team today, my job is pretty easy with no activities. Check out this throwback image of our pre-flight rover showing off her turret instruments!

For the rest of today's power puzzle, the RSM was given ~2 hours of science time to split between ChemCam, Mastcam, and Navcam. After the experts spent some time moving activities around to get the best lighting and timing for power, we were still able to squeeze over 100 Mastcam frames in the plan!

These frames will include an area we've imaged before to detect any changes (usually from wind), the sun and sky to continue monitoring increasing dust activity, and a lookback at the Bolivar and Deepdale buttes to document the many ChemCam Micro-Images at this drill site in color.

Chemcam will shoot its laser at a target on the ground named "Vila Irabuia" for spectroscopy and take a 16-frame mosaic of distant ridges for stratigraphic investigations. Navcam will also investigate the increasing dust activity including a 9-minute movie to hopefully catch any dust devils on the horizon! Stay tuned for next plan where we'll begin to wrap up the Canaima drill campaign so we can get back on that dusty trail.

Sols 3616-3620: It's SAM Time!
by Keri Bean, Rover Planner Deputy Team Lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Curiosity spent the weekend (sols 3616-3618) running a second night of CheMin analysis on the Canaima drilled sample and preparing SAM to accept a sample for analysis. The rover also continued to collect remote sensing and environmental science observations, including ChemCam and Mastcam observations of "Baracara Falls" and "Gabro Caracarai,"as well as a ChemCam RMI mosaic pointed towards Bolivar.

Today we planned sols 3619 and 3620. The main star of the show was a sample delivery to SAM! A SAM analysis activity takes a lot of power to run, so it took a lot of negotiating and moving around activities to fit in as much science as we possibly can. Curiosity will also enjoy a few good naps in the plan to recharge the batteries.

We start sol 3619 off with a block of science imaging activities and a CheMin data retrieval. The imaging block starts off with some Mastcam and Navcam atmospheric observations to monitor the ongoing dust storm. After that, we use ChemCam's laser to analyze "Alcalina Apiau" and take a Mastcam image to document the ChemCam observation, followed by a Mastcam image of our drill target Canaima to monitor how the winds may have affected the drill tailings.

Once all those science observations wrap up, the rover naps most of the afternoon to recharge the battery and to await calmer winds to drop off some of the Canaima drilled sample using our robotic arm. Today I was RP2 which is the role responsible for the final verification and validation of the arm commands before sending them to the rover. I had a trainee today that handled all of the work like a pro! Overnight we perform a SAM analysis on the delivered sample.

In the very early morning of sol 3620, as the SAM analysis wraps up, we have some communication passes scheduled. During that time, we'll also take some DAN data and retrieve the SAM data from the instrument to send back to Earth for the very eager scientists to take a look at! Once those passes end, the rover will sleep until much later in the morning.

Once the rover wakes back up again, we'll take another round of DAN data along with a set of atmospheric observations with Mastcam and Navcam, then use the ChemCam laser to analyze "Huruwassaru Creek" and then use ChemCam's camera to image the marker band in the distance.

Once ChemCam is done, Mastcam will take a picture of the Huruwassaru Creek just freshly zapped by ChemCam. The rover will then sleep the rest of the sol to recharge the battery for the next plan. Throughout the plan we also include our RAD and REMS observations to monitor the local environment.

Related Links
Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory
Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com
Lunar Dreams and more

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Sols 3614-3615: Chemin's Moment To Shine
Pasadena CA (JPL) Oct 06, 2022
The Curiosity team continues with our "Canaima" drill campaign. [Today's] 2-sol plan will provide our first look at the minerals present within this sample. This is complementary but different than the chemical compositions provided by ChemCam and APXS before we drilled. CheMin uses X-ray diffraction to confirm crystalline mineralogy, they direct a beam of X-rays, as fine as a human hair, through the drilled sample. The X-rays interact with the material and then diffract at specific angles. This c ... read more