Written by Natalie Moore, Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems
Prithvi Plan Date: Wednesday, April 9, 2025
Our drive was mostly successful with Monday’s plan, which kept us out of the expected 30 meters from the “road” ~ 22 meters below. A steering command reduced the drive slightly when we tried turn-in-place, but instead turned into a rock, which also caused the effect of making our situation very unstable for hand activities. Oh good! The APXS data is showing the recent terrain very equally in the composition, so the team is not complaining about trying again after another drive. In addition, keeping the hand should give us a little more power to play with the upcoming Sol (the conflict in this martian winter).
Recently, my job on Mastcam is to ensure that our science imaging is equal to the necessary rover activities. This strategy helps to save rover awake time, aka power consumption. Today we did a very good job with it, only extended the total awakened time to ~ 2 minutes, even if we have planned 52 images! Today our imaging included a mosaic of the “Devils Gate” ridge, including some noduler bedocks and a distant “tooter bowl”, a closer-nus network called “Moonstone Beach”, and we see many sandy troughs around the Bedrock blocks.
Chemcam is planning a Libs ravine on a vertical vein in our field, named “Jacobbit Flat”, and a distant RMI Mosaic of “Kondor Peak” (we are losing a scene in the north). Our drive will be on the first Sol in 1400 hours, hopefully we will successfully push us 53 meters ahead in this new valley, which is on our way to the west for boxwork structures! Post-Drive, we are involving the test of “Post Traveers Autonav Terren Observation” aka Potato-an easy drop-in activity for the ground analysis of our new area’s rover-made navigation map. Also, we call a lot to potatoes.
