Written by Debora Padgate, OPGS Task Lead in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Prithvi Plan Date: Friday, June 20, 2025
During the scheme covering SOLS 4575–4576, curiosity continued our investigation of mysterious boxwork structures on the shoulders of Mount Sharp. After a successful 56-meter drive (about 184 ft), curiosity is now cut into a trough, standing through a highly fragmented area, which is covered by linear characteristics, which is considered a proof of groundwater flow in the distant past of Mars. The rover is ready for science with all six wheels, firmly planted on solid ground! Unfortunately, a repetition of the use of frost and address expected for the weekend plan is postponed for a few days due to a well-understood camcam issue. Meanwhile, our atmospheric investigation has a chance to shine, as they found extra time to inspect the Martian sky.
In the early afternoon of Sol 4577, Curiosity’s navigation camera will take a film of upper access to the Aolis Mons (Mount Sharp), hoping to watch the moving cloud shadow. This observation enables the team to calculate the height of the clouds flowing at the peak. Next, the Navcam will indicate directly upwards, image the cloud motion in the genith and determine the direction of the air at their height. Mastkam will then do a series of small mosaics to study the rover workpiece and study the characteristics of the trough entering curiosity. The first is a 6×4 stereo mosaic of the workpiece and aims to the contact science “Kopakbana” and “Copypo”. The first target is a representative sample of the trough bedock, and its name celebrates a city in Bolivia, located on the banks of Lake Tikka. The second target is a section of lighter-tond materials, which may be associated with stripes or “veins” filling several crosscuting fractures in local stones. These are long ago groundwater infiltration deposits are potentially left. The name “Kopiapo” honors a silver mining city in the highly dried Atakama desert in North Chile. A second 6×3 mastkam stereo will see active cracks in the mosaic trough. The two additional 5×1 mastkam stereo mosque targets “Ardamarka”, which is a ridge parallel to the trough walls, and highlights layers highlighting a rock of rock based on the “Mishhe Mokwa” butt. At our present location, all curiosity target names are taken from Uyuni Geology Chaturbhuj, named after other Lake Beds and Almanac Lake on Bolivian Altiplano, but Mishhe is back to Mokwa Batte Altadanea Quad, named for a popular hackle hanging in Santa Monica Mountains. After this long science block, curiosity will deploy his hand, brushing dust from Kopakbana with DRT, then giving it an image to both of them and Copypo with a Mahali microscopic imagener. Overnight, Apxs will determine the structure of these two goals.
In the early dawn of SOL 4578, using morning lights to highlight the shadow of the Mastcam area, the larger 27×5 and 18×3 stereo mosque from different parts of the trough will take. Later in the day, the Navcam will conduct a 360 Sky survey, which will determine the phase ceremony throughout the sky. The 25-meter drive (about 82 ft) will be followed, and in post-drive imaging contain an image of the 360-degree Navakam panorama of our new location and an image of the ground under the rover with mardi in the evening twilight. The next Sol is all atmospheric science, with a broad set of Suprahorizon films and a dust-dust survey for Navkam, as well as a mastcam dust opative observation. The final set of comments in the plan is to inspect clouds with more Navcam Suprahorizon and Zenith movies in the morning of Sol 4580, a navakam dust in the Gayle Creater, and a final mastkam tau. On Monday, we hope to plan another drive and soon expects to return to the frost-detection experiment as we detect Mars’s boxwork Canian.
