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NASA's Mars Exploration Program (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Sol 3194: Housekeeping Please!
The images for panorama obtained by the rover's 34-millimeter Mast Camera. The mosaic, which stretches about 30,000 pixels width, includes 134 images taken on Sol 3194 (July 31, 2021).
We are continuing our traverse towards Mount Sharp and are passing through an area of more resistant buttes or mesas, some of which can be seen in the image above, and the larger Rafael Navarro Mountain. The spectacular scenery is providing our camera teams with some incredible images to focus on, which will be used to help interpret the origin of these buttes.
Our recent workspaces have been amazing too, with unusual textures, abundant nodules, and dark and white veins. Today’s workspace was no exception with a wealth of interesting features, just waiting to be analyzed and understood by us Earthlings. However, just like on Earth, we had to dedicate parts of our usual weekend science time to doing some housekeeping – a series of routine checks on rover and instrument health. APXS will analyse their calibration target, and MAHLI and Mastcam will take images of the rover wheels. The wheel imaging is a periodic, routine measurement, taken every 1000 metres, to document the health of the wheels and to flag any issues. This takes a lot of resources, as the rover adjusts its position four times to give Mastcam and MAHLI better access to each of the wheels. At least this housekeeping activity is more fun than those many of us will be undertaking this weekend!
As a result, we had less time to spend doing science activities and had to pick our targets carefully today. APXS and MAHLI will analyze a rough bedrock target "Bregout" here, whilst ChemCam and Mastcam will analyse some erosion resistant nodules ("Valeuil") and a dark grey fin or layer of material, which looks different to the bedrock below ("Limeuil.") ENV will continue its monitoring of the environment, with tau measurements (measuring dust in the atmosphere around us) and a series of dust devil movies, which aim to capture dust devils in the distance. Before we leave this spot, Mastcam will take more images of the buttes around us. Then we drive onwards, through the buttes, in search of more discoveries!
Catherine O'Connell-Cooper
Other panoramas of Mars by Curiosity rover:
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The planet Earth has proven to be too limiting for our awesome community of panorama photographers. We're getting an increasing number of submissions that depict locations either not on Earth (like Mars, the Moon, and Outer Space in general) or do not realistically represent a geographic location on Earth (either because they have too many special effects or are computer generated) and hence don't strictly qualify for our Panoramic World project.But many of these panoramas are extremely beautiful or popular of both.So, in order to accommodate our esteemed photographers and the huge audience that they attract to 360Cities with their panoramas, we've created a new section (we call it an "area") called "Out of this World" for panoramas like these.Don't let the fact that these panoramas are being placed at the Earth's South Pole fool you - we had to put them somewhere in order not to interfere with our Panoramic World.Welcome aboard on a journey "Out of this World".
