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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 3 min read
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4618-4619: The Boxwork Structures Continue to Call to Us
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on Aug. 1, 2025 — Sol 4616, or Martian day 4,616 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 03:36:56 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Ashley Stroupe, Mission Operations Engineer and Rover Planner at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Earth planning date: Friday, Aug. 1, 2025.
Now that we have reached August, our “landiversary” (anniversary of landing — Aug. 5 PDT) is less than a week away! The team is looking forward to being able to celebrate the milestone of our rover becoming a teenager at 13. Today’s image is a beautiful back-lit late afternoon image of the nearby mountains and the distant crater rim. These views make working on Mars never get old!
The first sol of today’s plan is very busy because we will only have data from the first sol down in time for planning on Monday. Today I was working as a Rover Planner, supporting both arm and drive activities. We start first thing with arm activities; we DRT brush and do APXS integration on the target “San Cristóbal,” which is a bedrock target, and the only place in the workspace smooth and flat enough for us to brush.
After a brief nap, we have an extensive imaging campaign. We take Mastcam images of the AEGIS target from the previous plan and two potential vein targets “Rio Satja” and “Río Ichilo.” We then take Mastcam stereo mosaics of boxwork targets “Pontezuelo” and “Catedrales de Tara.” Additionally we have stereo mosaics of “Llanos de Challe,” a transition between the bedrock in the boxwork hollow and the boxwork ridge, a nearby light-toned exposure, and some additional troughs and ridges. ChemCam then takes a LIBS observation of “Airport Domes,” which is another hollow in the boxworks. Finally, we take a ChemCam RMI and a Mastcam of Pontezuelo.
After finishing all the imaging, we continue with the rest of the arm activities. We split the arm activities to accommodate conflicting constraints — both APXS and ChemCam both need to be as early as possible. In this set of arm activities, we begin with MAHLI imaging of the two targets, San Cristóbal and “Salar de Agua Amara,” which consists of delicate branching structures likely made by groundwater.
After another short nap, we do a small adjustment in our position to get another interesting piece of bedrock ridge in our workspace. In order to approach it at a good angle, we first drive parallel to the ridge to be lined up with the target, and then we turn and drive straight to it. Due to constraints on how we like to park at targets, sometimes these shorter drives can be more complicated than longer ones — but today it was simpler. After completing the drive, we unstow the arm to get a clear view of our workspace for Monday’s planning as well as our standard post-drive imaging and then Curiosity goes to sleep for the night.
The second sol of the plan is a bit more leisurely. Around midday, Curiosity will be taking some atmospheric observations, including a Navcam dust-devil survey and a south-facing suprahorizon movie, followed by an AEGIS activity where the rover gets to pick targets and observe them herself. Then, early the next morning, Curiosity will wake up to take some additional atmospheric observations, including Navcam zenith and suprahorizon movies, Navcam line-of-sight toward the crater rim, and a Mastcam solar tau to measure dust in the atmosphere. Finally, she’ll get a short nap before waking up to start the next plan.
Learn more about Curiosity’s science instruments
For more Curiosity blog posts, visit MSL Mission Updates
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Last Updated Aug 05, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
As the Sun approaches the most active part of its eleven-year magnetic cycle this summer, NASA volunteers have been watching it closely. Now they’ve spotted a new trend in solar behavior that will have you reaching for your suntan lotion. It’s all about something called a “Type II” solar radio burst:
“Type II solar radio bursts are not commonly detected in the frequency range between 15 to 30 megahertz,” said Prof. Chuck Higgins, Co-founder of Radio JOVE. “Recently, we’re seeing many of them in that range.”
Let’s unpack that. Our Sun often sprays powerful blasts of radio waves into space. Heliophysicists classify these radio bursts into five different types depending on how the frequency of the radio waves drifts over time. “Type II” solar radio bursts seem to come from solar flares and enormous squirts of hot plasma called coronal mass ejections.
Now, Thomas Freeman, an undergraduate student at Middle Tennessee State University, and other volunteers working on NASA’s Radio JOVE project have observed something interesting about these Type II bursts: they are now showing up at lower frequencies—somewhere in between FM and AM radio.
What does it mean? It means our star is full of surprises! These Radio JOVE observations of the Sun’s radio emissions during solar maximum can be used to extend our knowledge of solar emissions to lower frequencies and, therefore, to distances farther from the Sun.
Radio JOVE is a NASA partner citizen science project in which participants assemble and operate radio astronomy telescopes to gather and contribute data to support scientific studies. Radio JOVE collaborated with SunRISE Ground Radio Lab, organized teams of high school students to observe the Sun, and recently published a paper on these Type II solar radio bursts. Learn more and get involved!
A Type II solar radio burst on April 23rd, 2024, seen as the gently sloping yellow band drifting from 17:49 to 18:02 UTC in the 15-30 MHz radio frequency-time spectrogram. Credit: Tom Ashcraft, Lamy, NM Share
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NASA Citizen Science and Your Career: Stories of Exoplanet Watch Volunteers
Doing NASA Science brings many rewards. But can taking part in NASA citizen science help your career? To find out, we asked participants in NASA’s Exoplanet Watch project about their experiences. In this project, amateur astronomers work together with professionals to track planets around other stars.
First, we heard from professional software programmers. Right away, one of them told us about getting a new job through connections made in the project.
“I decided to create the exoplanet plugin, [for citizen science] since it was quite a lot of manual work to check which transits were available for your location. The exoplanet plugin and its users got me in contact with the Stellar group… Through this group, I got into contact with a company called OurSky and started working for them… the point is, I created a couple of plugins for free and eventually got a job at an awesome company.”
Another participant talked about honing their skills and growing their confidence through Exoplanet Watch.
“There were a few years when I wasn’t actively coding. However, Exoplanet Watch rekindled that spark…. Participating in Exoplanet Watch even gave me the confidence to prepare again for a technical interview at Meta—despite having been thoroughly defeated the first time I tried.”
Teachers and teaching faculty told us how Exoplanet Watch gives them the ability to better convey what scientific research is all about – and how the project motivates students!
“Exoplanet Watch makes it easy for undergraduate students to gain experience in data science and Python, which are absolutely necessary for graduate school and many industry jobs.”
“Experience with this collaborative work is a vital piece of the workforce development of our students who are seeking advanced STEM-related careers or ongoing education in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics) fields after graduation… Exoplanet Watch, in this way, is directly training NASA’s STEM workforce of tomorrow by allowing CUNY (The City University of New York) students to achieve the science goals that would otherwise be much more difficult without its resources.”
One aspiring academic shared how her participation on the science team side of the project has given her research and mentorship experience that strengthens her resume.
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There are no guarantees, of course. What you get out of NASA citizen science depends on what you put in. But there is certainly magic to be found in the Exoplanet Watch project. As one student said:
“Help will always be found at Hogwarts, to those who need it.” Exoplanet Watch was definitely Hogwarts for me in my career as an astronomer!”
For more information about NASA and your career, check out NASA’s Surprisingly STEM series highlighting exciting and unexpected jobs at NASA, or come to NASA Career Day, a virtual event for students and educators. Participants must register by September 4, 2025. The interactive platform will be open from September 15-19, with live panels and events taking place on September 18.
Exoplanet Watch volunteer Bryan Martin
Credit: Bryan Martin
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By European Space Agency
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Sponsored by the Polish government and supported by ESA, the Polish Ministry of Economic Development and Technology (MRiT), and the Polish Space Agency (POLSA), the Ignis mission features an ambitious technological and scientific programme. It includes several experiments proposed by the Polish space industry and developed in cooperation with ESA, along with additional ESA-led experiments.
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By European Space Agency
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