(ORDO NEWS) — Last time we traveled a little over 30 meters around the planet, reaching our current location. If you look closely at our past pictures, you can see that today we have the same stone blocks in front of us, only a few tens of meters closer.
Looking at the almost rectangular block in the upper middle of today’s navigation camera image, there was a lot of discussion today whether this block is a gable-based block or not. But in the end, the team decided it looked like it wasn’t.
Regular readers of our site and the rover block will remember how difficult it is to climb this terrain. Especially when it comes to wheels. So, observations will be made on this rock using our ChemCam, LIBS and RMI advanced photography tools.
After several hours of discussion, we decided that Curiosity would not try to climb the mountain to get to its top. The main argument was the understanding of what we can find there, as well as poor ground and sharp stones – the wheels are not in the best condition.
The Mastcam will be very busy on this interesting landscape, with the largest photo mosaic giving us a new view of the Mirador Butte area we are in.
In addition, our Environment and Atmospheric Research team continues to monitor the state of the atmosphere by observing atmospheric opacity every day of the current plan.
Just like on Earth, we watch the weather – this is a topic that we especially like here. It’s a bit dusty in Gale Crater and Curiosity is heading up the slope after which ChemCam will do a LIBS AEGIS survey and of course our usual photo shoot after today’s trip in preparation for the next few days of planning.
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