Tag: Curiosity

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The panorama above was taken by Curiosity’s right navigation camera today, December 14, 2022, looking down into Gediz Vallis, the giant slot canyon that the rover will use as its route up Mount Sharp.

The red dotted lines above and on the overview map to the right indicate approximately the planned route for Curiosity. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the panorama above.

At present the scientists are attempting to drill into the marker band on which Curiosity sits. This marker layer is visible at many places at about the same elevation on all sides of Mount Sharp’s flanks. The white arrows indicate other examples of it in this overview map. It generally appears smooth and flat, which suggests it is made of a harder substance more resistant to erosion. That hardness was confirmed when Curiosity’s first drill attempt into it last week failed. The scientists are now trying again.

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The panorama above, created from 31 images taken by Curiosity’s right navigation camera on December 5, 2022, provides us a wonderful overview of the rover’s recent and future travels amid the lower foothills of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater.

The overview map to the right provides context. The blue dot indicates Curiosity’s present position. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area viewed by the panorama. The red dotted line indicates Curiosity’s planned route, with the white dots the route it has actually traveled. On the panorama, the pink dotted line indicates where it has been, and the red dotted line where it is going.

For scale, Kukenan is estimated to be about 1,500 feet high. Though Chenapua in front seems comparable, it is actually much smaller, only about 200 to 300 feet high, at the most. Orinoco, though lower on the mountain, is probably about 300 to 400 feet high.

To really see the magnificence of this terrain, you must click on the panorama and explore the full image. Curiosity is truly traveling amid mountains, and is the first human robot to do so on another world.

To see the original images, go here and here.

Today the science team for the Mars rover Curiosity downloaded more photos of its wheels, a survey taken routinely now after every 500 meters or 1640 feet of travel. Unlike the pictures made available yesterday that showed some of the worst damage to one of Curiosity’s middle wheels, these new images included the wheel I have been tracking since 2017 as a baseline to see if further damage has occurred.

The photos to the right show that wheel, with the top photo from August and the bottom created from two pictures taken on November 20, 2022. The numbers indicate the matching treads. The “+” sign in the top image indicates a location where new damage was spotted in August.

As you can see, this wheel does not appear to have experienced any additional damage in the more than three months since that August update. While the damage to Curiosity’s wheels remains very concerning, it does appear based on this one wheel that — despite the generally very rough terrain the rover has been traversing since it entered the foothills of Mount Sharp — the wheels in general seem to be holding up.

Though I have not done a careful comparison of these new wheel images with earlier ones, none of the new images appear to show any additional significant damage. It appears that the travel criteria the science team adopted years ago — right after discovering the wheel damage — continues to work to protect the wheels. It picks the rover’s path more carefully to avoid sharper rocks, and includes software that stops the rover should it sense it is crossing a rock sharper than desired.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on November 2, 2022 by one of the high resolution cameras on the Mars rover Curiosity.

There isn’t much to say. This strangely eroded rock appears somewhat typical for many surface rocks in this area in the foothills of Mount Sharp. The erosion is likely from wind, combined with the rock’s low density because of Mars’ one-third Earth gravity. Even so, that wind would have needed many many eons to achieve this erosion, as the atmosphere on Mars is only about 1% as thick as Earth’s.

The lack of data also leaves open the possibility that other as-yet-unknown chemical processes contributed to that erosion.

Note: The grid pattern in the image is an artifact from the camera, and is not an actual feature on the Martian surface.

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The science team running the Curiosity rover on Mount Sharp on Mars have decided to take the rover on a detour. As shown in the overview map to the right, rather than continue climbing directly up the mountain in the canyon dubbed Gediz Vallis, they have turned the rover to the west in order to put it back on its original planned route, though traveling in the opposite direction. The goal is to get to Gediz Vallis Ridge, which the rover attempted to reach by crossing the Greenheugh Pediment back in the spring, but was forced to retreat because the ground was simply too rough for the rover’s wheels.

From their October 31st update:

We are now officially on our detour, a short round trip to image and capture geochemistry of the “Gediz Vallis ridge” up on the pediment, before coming back down to the “Marker Band valley” and rejoining the MSAR (Mount Sharp Ascent Route). This detour will allow us to access some of the area we’d planned to visit before getting turned around by the ‘gator-back’ terrain on the Greenheugh pediment. For this part of the campaign, we are prioritizing driving, getting to our destination as fast as we can, but imaging as we go and marking areas of interest for contact science as we come back down.

The panorama above, cropped and reduced to post here, shows the rover’s view uphill to get to the ridge. The blue dot marks its present position. The yellow lines mark the approximate area viewed by the panorama above.

I think the rover’s path will take it up through the saddle between the two small peaks on the left. The science team is likely hoping that once they get up over that saddle, the terrain to get to the ridge will be smoother and less treacherous than the very broken and rocky surface of the Greenheugh Pediment.

This route also appears to also get them up on the marker band more safely. That band, marked by the white arrows, is a distinct smooth layer found in many places on the flanks of Mount Sharp.

Cool image time! The picture above was taken on August 11, 2022 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. It shows a great example of the strange manner in which the bedrock in the layered cliffs on Mount Sharp appear to break apart.

I am not certain exactly where this feature is, or its exact scale, but based on the date and where Curiosity was located when the photo was taken, it likely is a small section from one of two hills, Deepdale and Bolivar, that Curiosity passed between in mid-August. It is likely somewhere in the panorama included in my August 11th post, but I have not yet been able to locate it.

Nonetheless, the breakage here is typical of these cliff faces. The structural strength of these layered hills is not very high, so at some point one section can break away from another as the hill sags downward to the left. What makes the cracks here more intriguing is that something caused the higher sections surrounding the main block to widen. On Earth we would assume that this widening was caused by rainwater pouring in from the top. On Mars, that explanation doesn’t hold water.

Wind? Seasonal thermal changes? Neither explains the change in the width of the cracks along their length. Maybe the wider cracks indicate an increased sagging of the hill to the left. The layers below this broken block have simply not slid to the left as much.

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The panorama above was created by Curiosity’s right navigation camera on August 28, 2022, and shows the strangely paved Martian terrain directly in front of the rover now that it is inside the valley of Gediz Vallis, scattered flat rocks interspersed with dust. The yellow lines in the overview map to the right indicates the area covered by this panorama. The red dotted line indicates the rover’s likely future route to circle around the small mesa Chenapua.

The paved rocks however may not be separate, but merely covered in their low spots by dust. What makes these light rocks significant is that they appear to be the first close examples of the sulfate-bearing layer that the rover has seen in the higher reaches of Mount Sharp since it landed in Gale Crater more than ten years ago. You can see this bright layer clearly in the distance in a panorama taken by Curiosity in June 2021. The rover has now finally reached it, and is about to delve into another layer in the geological history of Mars, a layer that appears easily weathered and carved by the thin Martian atmosphere.

Other details in this panorama are of important note. In the overview map, I have indicated that a recurring slope lineae is supposed to exist on the cliff face of the mesa dubbed Orinoco. These lineae, seen from orbit, appear to be streaks on slopes that come and go seasonally. No one has come up with a theory to explain them, though the most favored theory today says they are staining dust flows of some kind.

However, if you click on the panorama and zoom in on the cliff face of Orinoco, you will see an incredibly rough rocky terrain. It seems impossible for any streak of any kind to flow down this cliff anywhere, suggesting that the streaks might possibly be like the rays that radiate out from craters on the Moon, visible only from orbit and invisible on the surface.

The marker layer is another important geological target, now almost within reach. This flat layer is found in many places on the flanks of Mount Sharp, all at about the same approximate elevation. It is distinctly flat and relatively smooth. Knowing why it stands out so differently from the layers above and below will help geologists better write the geological history of this Martian mountain and the crater in which it sits.

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Cool image time! The photo to right, taken by the Mars rover Curiosity on August 9, 2022, provides a nice close-up of what might be a somewhat typical rock on the flanks of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater, many layered with some of those layers extending outward to the side for somewhat ridiculous distances as thin flakes.

The scientists call it a float rock, because they think it actually fell from the cliff dubbed Bolivar in the panorama above. Thus, it gives geologists data on the layers higher up that are not easily accessible from Curiosity’s present position.

The panorama is a mosaic created from images taken by the rover’s right navigation camera on August 8, 2022. The white arrow marks the rock. The green dot marks the approximate location on the cliff face of a previously observed recurring slope lineae, streaks that appear to come and go seasonally whose origin is still not understood.

The red dots mark my guess as to the route engineers will pick for Curiosity as it weaves its way around the other float rocks ahead.
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Sometime today the rover Curiosity will celebrate its tenth anniversary on Mars. The oblique graphic of Gale Crater above, first released by the science team shortly before landing in 2012, has been further annotated with a red line to show the rover’s journey since then. As noted by Scott VanBommel, Planetary Scientist at Washington University, today on the science team’s blog:

As we the science and engineering teams have aged this last decade, so has Curiosity. The toll of ten years and nearly 28.5 km [17.7 miles] of Mars driving shows with every MAHLI wheel imaging activity, with less energy available for a plan, and with aging mechanisms. This is the life of a Mars rover. Spirit and Opportunity were no different, yet they persisted and paved the way scientifically and technologically for the rovers of today. Curiosity has made numerous scientific discoveries during these ten years, emphasized by the over 500 science team publications, with many more ahead as we continue our ascent and exploration of Gale crater and Mount Sharp.

I look forward to the next ten years.

Despite that aging, Curiosity’s general condition appears quite excellent, with its wheels the greatest concern but generally holding up. Based on the last ten years, the rover is likely to remain operational for at least ten more years, if not longer.

In the more immediate future, the rover is only days away from getting its first good look down into Gediz Valles, that canyon on the graphic above that it has been traveling towards since day one.

A good review of five of Curiosity’s biggest discoveries using its sample analysis instrument can be found here.

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Cool image time! The mosaic above, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, was created from 31 navigation images taken by the Mars rover Curiosity, and shows the rover’s upcoming drive. From the science team’s July 29, 2022 update:

We are attempting to reach a high point, just at the top right edge of the image, so we can look down into the valley to see if there is a way out on the other side and to help plan our path forward. High tilts, sand, and large and small rocks clutter the terrain, requiring the Rover Planners to pick their way around while making sure they stay clear of the hazards.

After the drive, we took a lot of imaging from our new location, including a 360 degree Mastcam mosaic and an upper tier of imaging to catch the tall relief of the valley walls.

The green dot in the image above as well as the overview map to the right indicates the approximate location on the cliff face of a previously observed recurring slope lineae, streaks that appear to come and go seasonally whose origin is still not understood.

The blue dot on the map marks the rover’s position on August 1, 2022. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the mosaic above. The large red dots on the overview indicate the rover’s original planned route, with the smaller red dots indicating the hoped-for route to get back to that path.

In the far distance the upper slopes of Mount Sharp can faintly be seen through the winter dust haze. That mountain is about 18,000 feet high, though its actual peak is not yet visible. Curiosity is still about 16,000 feet below that peak. Kukenan is about 1,500 feet high. The cliff with the slope lineae is probably about 400-500 feet high The two side hills that delineate the pass ahead are probably no more than 200 feet high.

Click for full resolution. For original images go here and here.

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Cool image time! The panorama above, taken by one of the navigation cameras on the Mars rover Curiosity on July 23, 2022, forms a nice bookend to yesterday’s panorama. Yesterday Curiosity looked back at its past travels. Today it looks forward at where it is almost certainly heading in the days ahead.

On the overview map to the right, the yellow lines indicate the approximate area viewed by the panorama. The large red dotted line marks the rover’s original planned route, abandoned when the science team found the terrain on the Greenheugh Pediment too rough for Curiosity’s wheels. The smaller red dotted line is my present guess as to the rover’s future route to get back on course.

The flat-topped mountain dubbed Kukenán by the science team has probably been one of the prime goals of the entire mission, from the beginning. Its almost vertical face has innumerable layers, all of which record in great detail the geological history of Mars and Gale Crater. As noted by Abigail Fraeman from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on June 30, 2022:

Kukenán’s Earth namesake is a tepui, or distinctive isolated table-top mountain, found in South America. The Martian Kukenán is also somewhat flat topped and an impressive expression in Mt. Sharp’s topography. While it looks like it’s about the same size as the hills that bound it in the above Navcam image (“Deepdale” on the left and the edge of “Bolivar” on the right), this effect is just due to forced perspective. In reality, Kukenán is nearly five times farther away and over three times as tall as Deepdale! Curiosity’s strategic traverse path takes the rover right past Kukenán in about a kilometer or so, so this feature will become a familiar landmark rising in our windshield for months to come.

The science team will likely park Curiosity in the saddle of the gap ahead for at least a week and spend a lot of time documenting that cliff face with multiple cameras, since at this location the rover will have an excellent view of that entire face. As it gets closer the angle looking up will get steeper, thus making viewing of the upper layers more difficult.

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Cool image time! Normally I’d be hiking today, but since it is raining in southern Arizona at every mountain location we might want to go, I am forced to imagine hiking on Mars instead. The photo above, cropped to post here, was part of a mosaic of images taken on July 22, 2022 by the right navigation camera on the rover Curiosity.

Curiosity had just completed several drives that had it skirt around those two boulders visible in the center of the picture, as shown in the inset in the overview map to the right. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the photo. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present location. The larger red dotted line the rover’s original planned route, with the smaller dotted line my guess as to the route the science team now plans to take to return to that course.

The rim of Gale Crater can be seen in the far distance, about 20 to 30 miles away and largely obscured by the winter dust that presently fills the atmosphere.

The science team had hoped to get close enough to these two boulders to touch them with the rover’s instruments, but decided to keep away because of both appeared a bit unstable.