Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
-
Similar Topics
-
By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
In addition to drilling rock core samples, the science team has been grinding its way into rocks to make sense of the scientific evidence hiding just below the surface.
NASA’s Perseverance rover uses an abrading bit to get below the surface of a rocky out-crop nicknamed “Kenmore” on June 10. The eight images that make up this video were taken approximately one minute apart by one of the rover’s front hazard-avoidance cameras. NASA/JPL-Caltech On June 3, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover ground down a portion of a rock surface, blew away the resulting debris, and then went to work studying its pristine interior with a suite of instruments designed to determine its mineralogic makeup and geologic origin. “Kenmore,” as nicknamed by the rover science team, is the 30th Martian rock that Perseverance has subjected to such in-depth scrutiny, beginning with drilling a two-inch-wide (5-centimeter-wide) abrasion patch.
“Kenmore was a weird, uncooperative rock,” said Perseverance’s deputy project scientist, Ken Farley from Caltech in Pasadena, California. “Visually, it looked fine — the sort of rock we could get a good abrasion on and perhaps, if the science was right, perform a sample collection. But during abrasion, it vibrated all over the place and small chunks broke off. Fortunately, we managed to get just far enough below the surface to move forward with an analysis.”
The science team wants to get below the weathered, dusty surface of Mars rocks to see important details about a rock’s composition and history. Grinding away an abrasion patch also creates a flat surface that enables Perseverance’s science instruments to get up close and personal with the rock.
This close-up view of an abrasion showing distinctive “tool marks” created by the Perseverance’s abrading bit was acquired on June 5. The image was taken from approximately 2.76 inches (7 centimeters) away by the rover’s WATSON imager. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Perseverance’s gold-colored abrading bit takes center stage in this image of the rover’s drill taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument on Aug. 2, 2021, the 160th day of the mission to Mars.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS Time to Grind
NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, each carried a diamond-dust-tipped grinder called the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) that spun at 3,000 revolutions per minute as the rover’s robotic arm pushed it deeper into the rock. Two wire brushes then swept the resulting debris, or tailings, out of the way. The agency’s Curiosity rover carries a Dust Removal Tool, whose wire bristles sweep dust from the rock’s surface before the rover drills into the rock. Perseverance, meanwhile, relies on a purpose-built abrading bit, and it clears the tailings with a device that surpasses wire brushes: the gaseous Dust Removal Tool, or gDRT.
“We use Perseverance’s gDRT to fire a 12-pounds-per-square-inch (about 83 kilopascals) puff of nitrogen at the tailings and dust that cover a freshly abraded rock,” said Kyle Kaplan, a robotic engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Five puffs per abrasion — one to vent the tanks and four to clear the abrasion. And gDRT has a long way to go. Since landing at Jezero Crater over four years ago, we’ve puffed 169 times. There are roughly 800 puffs remaining in the tank.” The gDRT offers a key advantage over a brushing approach: It avoids any terrestrial contaminants that might be on a brush from getting on the Martian rock being studied.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
This video captures a test of Perseverance’s Gaseous Dust Removal Tool (gDRT) in a vacuum chamber at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in August 2020. The tool fires puffs of nitrogen gas at the tailings and dust that cover a rock after it has been abraded by the rover.NASA/JPL-Caltech Having collected data on abraded surfaces more than 30 times, the rover team has in-situ science (studying something in its original place or position) collection pretty much down. After gDRT blows the tailings away, the rover’s WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) imager (which, like gDRT, is at the end of the rover’s arm) swoops in for close-up photos. Then, from its vantage point high on the rover’s mast, SuperCam fires thousands of individual pulses from its laser, each time using a spectrometer to determine the makeup of the plume of microscopic material liberated after every zap. SuperCam also employs a different spectrometer to analyze the visible and infrared light that bounces off the materials in the abraded area.
“SuperCam made observations in the abrasion patch and of the powdered tailings next to the patch,” said SuperCam team member and “Crater Rim” campaign science lead, Cathy Quantin-Nataf of the University of Lyon in France. “The tailings showed us that this rock contains clay minerals, which contain water as hydroxide molecules bound with iron and magnesium — relatively typical of ancient Mars clay minerals. The abrasion spectra gave us the chemical composition of the rock, showing enhancements in iron and magnesium.”
Later, the SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals) and PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry) instruments took a crack at Kenmore, too. Along with supporting SuperCam’s discoveries that the rock contained clay, they detected feldspar (the mineral that makes much of the Moon brilliantly bright in sunlight). The PIXL instrument also detected a manganese hydroxide mineral in the abrasion — the first time this type of material has been identified during the mission.
With Kenmore data collection complete, the rover headed off to new territories to explore rocks — both cooperative and uncooperative — along the rim of Jezero Crater.
“One thing you learn early working on Mars rover missions is that not all Mars rocks are created equal,” said Farley. “The data we obtain now from rocks like Kenmore will help future missions so they don’t have to think about weird, uncooperative rocks. Instead, they’ll have a much better idea whether you can easily drive over it, sample it, separate the hydrogen and oxygen contained inside for fuel, or if it would be suitable to use as construction material for a habitat.”
Long-Haul Roving
On June 19 (the 1,540th Martian day, or sol, of the mission), Perseverance bested its previous record for distance traveled in a single autonomous drive, trekking 1,348 feet (411 meters). That’s about 210 feet (64 meters) more than its previous record, set on April 3, 2023 (Sol 753). While planners map out the rover’s general routes, Perseverance can cut down driving time between areas of scientific interest by using its self-driving system, AutoNav.
“Perseverance drove 4½ football fields and could have gone even farther, but that was where the science team wanted us to stop,” said Camden Miller, a rover driver for Perseverance at JPL. “And we absolutely nailed our stop target location. Every day operating on Mars, we learn more on how to get the most out of our rover. And what we learn today future Mars missions won’t have to learn tomorrow.”
News Media Contact
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
2025-082
Share
Details
Last Updated Jun 25, 2025 Related Terms
Perseverance (Rover) Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Explore More
5 min read NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Starts Unpacking Boxwork Formations
Article 2 days ago 4 min read NASA Mars Orbiter Captures Volcano Peeking Above Morning Cloud Tops
Article 3 weeks ago 6 min read NASA’s Ready-to-Use Dataset Details Land Motion Across North America
Article 3 weeks ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics
Missions
Humans in Space
Climate Change
Solar System
View the full article
-
By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Drag your mouse or move your phone to pan around within this 360-degree view to explore the boxwork patterns on Mars that NASA’s Curiosity is investigating for the first time. The rover captured the 291 images that make up this mosaic between May 15 and May 18.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS The rover recently drilled a sample from a new region with features that could reveal whether Mars’ subsurface once provided an environment suitable for life.
New images from NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover show the first close-up views of a region scientists had previously observed only from orbit. The images and data being collected are already raising new questions about how the Martian surface was changing billions of years ago. The Red Planet once had rivers, lakes, and possibly an ocean. Although scientists aren’t sure why, its water eventually dried up and the planet transformed into the chilly desert it is today.
By the time Curiosity’s current location formed, the long-lived lakes were gone in Gale Crater, the rover’s landing area, but water was still percolating under the surface. The rover found dramatic evidence of that groundwater when it encountered crisscrossing low ridges, some just a few inches tall, arranged in what geologists call a boxwork pattern. The bedrock below these ridges likely formed when groundwater trickling through the rock left behind minerals that accumulated in those cracks and fissures, hardening and becoming cementlike. Eons of sandblasting by Martian wind wore away the rock but not the minerals, revealing networks of resistant ridges within.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this scene while looking out across a region filled with boxwork patterns, low ridges that scientists think could have been formed by groundwater billions of years ago.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS The ridges Curiosity has seen so far look a bit like a crumbling curb. The boxwork patterns stretch across miles of a layer on Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain whose foothills the rover has been climbing since 2014. Intriguingly, boxwork patterns haven’t been spotted anywhere else on the mountain, either by Curiosity or orbiters passing overhead.
“A big mystery is why the ridges were hardened into these big patterns and why only here,” said Curiosity’s project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “As we drive on, we’ll be studying the ridges and mineral cements to make sure our idea of how they formed is on target.”
Important to the boxwork patterns’ history is the part of the mountain where they’re found. Mount Sharp consists of multiple layers, each of which formed during different eras of ancient Martian climate. Curiosity essentially “time travels” as it ascends from the oldest to youngest layers, searching for signs of water and environments that could have supported ancient microbial life.
The rover is currently exploring a layer with an abundance of salty minerals called magnesium sulfates, which form as water dries up. Their presence here suggests this layer emerged as the climate became drier. Remarkably, the boxwork patterns show that even in the midst of this drying, water was still present underground, creating changes seen today.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover viewed this low ridge, which looks a bit like a crumbling curb, on May 16. Scientists think the hardened edges of such ridges — part of the boxwork region the rover is exploring — may have been formed by ancient groundwater.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Scientists hope to gain more insight into why the boxwork patterns formed here, and Mars recently provided some unexpected clues. The bedrock between the boxwork ridges has a different composition than other layers of Mount Sharp. It also has lots of tiny fractures filled with white veins of calcium sulfate, another salty mineral left behind as groundwater trickles through rock cracks. Similar veins were plentiful on lower layers of the mountain, including one enriched with clays, but had not been spotted in the sulfate layer until now.
“That’s really surprising,” said Curiosity’s deputy project scientist, Abigail Fraeman of JPL. “These calcium sulfate veins used to be everywhere, but they more or less disappeared as we climbed higher up Mount Sharp. The team is excited to figure out why they’ve returned now.”
New Terrain, New Findings
On June 8, Curiosity set out to learn about the unique composition of the bedrock in this area, using the drill on the end of its robotic arm to snag a sample of a rock nicknamed “Altadena.” The rover then dropped the pulverized sample into instruments within its body for more detailed analysis.
Drilling additional samples from more distant boxwork patterns, where the mineral ridges are much larger, will help the mission make sense of what they find. The team will also search for organic molecules and other evidence of an ancient habitable environment preserved in the cemented ridges.
As Curiosity continues to explore, it will be leaving a new assortment of nicknames behind, as well. To keep track of features on the planet, the mission applies nicknames to each spot the rover studies, from hills it views with its cameras to specific calcium sulfate veins it zaps with its laser. (Official names, such as Aeolis Mons — otherwise known as Mount Sharp — are approved by the International Astronomical Union.)
The previous names were selected from local sites in Southern California, where JPL is based. The Altadena sample, for instance, bears the name of a community near JPL that was severely burned during January’s Eaton Canyon fire. Now on a new part of their Martian map, the team is selecting names from around Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni, Earth’s largest salt flat. This exceptionally dry terrain crosses into Chile’s Atacama Desert, and astrobiologists study both the salt flat and the surrounding desert because of their similarity to Mars’ extreme dryness.
More About Curiosity
Curiosity was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio.
For more about Curiosity, visit:
science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity
News Media Contacts
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
2025-080
Share
Details
Last Updated Jun 23, 2025 Related Terms
Curiosity (Rover) Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Explore More
4 min read NASA Mars Orbiter Captures Volcano Peeking Above Morning Cloud Tops
Article 2 weeks ago 6 min read NASA’s Ready-to-Use Dataset Details Land Motion Across North America
Article 2 weeks ago 5 min read 3 Black Holes Caught Eating Massive Stars in NASA Data
Black holes are invisible to us unless they interact with something else. Some continuously eat…
Article 3 weeks ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics
Missions
Humans in Space
Climate Change
Solar System
View the full article
-
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 4 min read
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4577-4579: Watch the Skies
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image inside a trough in the boxwork terrain on Mars, using its Right Navigation Camera. Curiosity captured the image on June 20, 2025 — Sol 4575, or Martian day 4,575 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 00:30:12 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Deborah Padgett, OPGS Task Lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Earth planning date: Friday, June 20, 2025
During the plan 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 feet), Curiosity is now parked in a trough cutting through a highly fractured region covered by linear features thought to be evidence of groundwater flow in the distant past of Mars. With all six wheels firmly planted on solid ground, our rover is ready for contact science! Unfortunately, a repeat of the frost-detection experiment expected for the weekend plan is postponed for a few days due to a well-understood ChemCam issue. In the meantime, our atmospheric investigations have a chance to shine, as they received additional time to observe the Martian sky.
In the early afternoon of Sol 4577, Curiosity’s navigation cameras will take a movie of the upper reaches of Aeolis Mons (Mount Sharp), hoping to see moving cloud shadows. This observation enables the team to calculate the altitude of clouds drifting over the peak. Next, Navcam will point straight up, to image cloud motion at the zenith and determine wind direction at their altitude. Mastcam will then do a series of small mosaics to study the rover workspace and features of the trough that Curiosity has entered. First is a 6×4 stereo mosaic of the workspace and the contact science targets “Copacabana” and “Copiapo.” The first target is a representative sample of the trough bedrock, and its name celebrates a town in Bolivia located on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The second target is a section of lighter-toned material, which may be associated with stripes or “veins” filling the many crosscutting fractures in the local stones. These are the deposits potentially left by groundwater intrusion long ago. The name “Copiapo” honors a silver mining city in the extremely dry Atacama desert of northern Chile. A second 6×3 Mastcam stereo mosaic will look at active cracks in the trough. Two additional 5×1 Mastcam stereo mosaics target “Ardamarca,” a ridge parallel to the trough walls, and a cliff exposing layers of rock at the base of “Mishe Mokwa” butte. At our current location, all the Curiosity target names are taken from the Uyuni geologic quadrangle named after the otherworldly lake bed and ephemeral lake high on the Bolivian altiplano, but the Mishe Mokwa butte is back in the Altadena quad, named for a popular hiking trail in the Santa Monica Mountains. After this lengthy science block, Curiosity will deploy its arm, brush the dust from Copacabana with the DRT, then image both it and Copiapo with the MAHLI microscopic imager. Overnight, APXS will determine the composition of these two targets.
Early in the morning of Sol 4578, Mastcam will take large 27×5 and 18×3 stereo mosaics of different parts of the trough, using morning light to highlight the terrain shadows. Later in the day, Navcam will do a 360 sky survey, determining phase function across the entire sky. A 25-meter drive (about 82 feet) will follow, and the post-drive imaging includes both a 360-degree Navcam 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 an extensive set of afternoon suprahorizon movies and a dust-devil survey for Navcam, as well as a Mastcam dust opacity observation. The final set of observations in this plan happens on the morning of Sol 4580 with more Navcam suprahorizon and zenith movies to observe clouds, a Navcam dust opacity measurement across Gale Crater, and a last Mastcam tau. On Monday, we expect to plan another drive and hope to return to the frost-detection experiment soon as we explore the boxwork canyons of Mars.
For more Curiosity blog posts, visit MSL Mission Updates
Learn more about Curiosity’s science instruments
Share
Details
Last Updated Jun 20, 2025 Related Terms
Blogs Explore More
2 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4575-4576: Perfect Parking Spot
Article
5 hours ago
3 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4573-4574: Welcome to the Uyuni Quad
Article
2 days ago
3 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4570-4572: A Fond Farewell, With a Side of Frost
Article
6 days ago
Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
All Mars Resources
Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…
Rover Basics
Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…
Mars Exploration: Science Goals
The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…
View the full article
-
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 2 min read
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4575-4576: Perfect Parking Spot
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of interesting textures exposed in an outcrop at the base of the “Mishe Mokwa” butte, ahead of the rover, using its Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) Remote Micro Imager (RMI). Curiosity captured the image on June 13, 2025 — Sol 4569, or Martian day 4,569 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 17:53:55 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL Written by Lucy Thompson, APXS Collaborator and Senior Research Scientist at the University of New Brunswick
Earth planning date: Wednesday, June 18, 2025
Not only did our drive execute perfectly, Curiosity ended up in one of the safest, most stable parking spots of the whole mission. We often come into the start of planning hoping that all the wheels are safely on the ground, but the terrain on Mars is not always very cooperative. As the APXS strategic planner I was really hoping that the rover was stable enough to unstow the arm and place APXS on a rock — which it was! We are acquiring APXS and ChemCam compositional analyses and accompanying Mastcam and MAHLI imaging of a brushed, flat, typical bedrock target, “Tarija.” This allows us to track the chemistry of the bedrock that hosts the potential boxwork features that we are driving towards.
As well as composition, we continue to image the terrain around us to better understand the local and regional context. Mastcam will acquire mosaics of some linear ridges off to the north of our current location, as well as of a potential fracture fill just out in front of our current parking spot, “Laguna del Bayo.” ChemCam will image part of an interesting outcrop (“Mishe Mokwa”) that we have already observed (see the image associated with this blog).
Thanks to the relatively benign terrain, the engineers have planned a 54-meter drive (about 177 feet) to our next location. After that drive (hopefully) executes successfully, we have a series of untargeted science observations. MARDI will image the terrain beneath the wheels and ChemCam will pick a rock target autonomously from our new workspace and analyze its chemistry.
To track atmospheric and environmental fluctuations, we are acquiring a Mastcam tau to measure dust in the sky as well as a Navcam large dust-devil survey and suprahorizon movie. The plan is rounded, as always, with standard DAN, REMS, and RAD activities.
For more Curiosity blog posts, visit MSL Mission Updates
Learn more about Curiosity’s science instruments
Share
Details
Last Updated Jun 20, 2025 Related Terms
Blogs Explore More
3 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4573-4574: Welcome to the Uyuni Quad
Article
2 days ago
3 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4570-4572: A Fond Farewell, With a Side of Frost
Article
6 days ago
2 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4568-4569: A Close Look at the Altadena Drill Hole and Tailings
Article
7 days ago
Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
All Mars Resources
Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…
Rover Basics
Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…
Mars Exploration: Science Goals
The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…
View the full article
-
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 4573-4574: Welcome to the Uyuni Quad
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image, looking southwest toward the distant large boxwork structures in the Uyuni quad, using its Left Navigation Camera on June 15, 2025 — Sol 4571, or Martian day 4,571 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 21:27:38 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Lauren Edgar, Planetary Geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center
Earth planning date: Monday, June 16, 2025
Over the weekend Curiosity successfully wrapped up activities at the “Altadena” drill site and got back on the road. The approximately 48-meter drive (about 157 feet) was successful, and placed the rover in the next mapping quadrangle (informally referred to as a quad).
As a reminder, the rover’s exploration area has been divided into 1.5 kilometer by 1.5 kilometer square quads, and each quad is named after a town of less than 100,000 people. As Curiosity explores features within a quad, we assign informal target names that correspond to geologic formations and features from that town on Earth.
Uyuni, Bolivia, is the gateway city near the world’s largest salt flats (salars), and it seems like an appropriate name as Curiosity explores drier depositional environments higher in the Mount Sharp stratigraphy. The team is excited to use some new target names that will draw from Uyuni and surrounding areas, including the Atacama Desert in Chile, which hosts many Mars analog sites including eolian features, studies of life in extreme environments, and some of the world’s great observatories. A fitting theme for this next phase of exploration!
As for today’s two-sol plan, we have a good balance of contact science, remote sensing, and another long drive. The team planned APXS and MAHLI on a nodular bedrock target named “Flamingo” to assess its chemistry and texture. In the targeted remote sensing block, the science team planned a Mastcam mosaic of “Los Patos” to characterize a depression which may be related to a small impact crater or boxwork structures, along with a Mastcam image of “La Lava” to investigate an interesting dark block. There are also several Mastcam mosaics of nearby troughs to assess active surface processes, and documentation images for ChemCam observations. The plan includes a ChemCam LIBS observation on a target named “Tacos” to assess the local bedrock, and a long-distance RMI mosaic to evaluate sedimentary structures at “Mishe Mokwa” butte. Then the rover will drive about 56 meters (about 184 feet) to the southwest, and take post-drive imaging to prepare for the next plan. On the second sol, Curiosity will complete a ChemCam calibration target activity, a Mastcam data management activity, and a few Navcam activities to monitor clouds and dust in the atmosphere.
We’re looking forward to exploring more of Uyuni as we work our way toward the larger exposure of boxwork structures that lie ahead, and the clues they hold to ancient Mars conditions.
For more Curiosity blog posts, visit MSL Mission Updates
Learn more about Curiosity’s science instruments
Share
Details
Last Updated Jun 18, 2025 Related Terms
Blogs Explore More
3 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4570-4572: A Fond Farewell, With a Side of Frost
Article
4 days ago
2 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4568-4569: A Close Look at the Altadena Drill Hole and Tailings
Article
5 days ago
2 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4566-4567: Drilling Success
Article
7 days ago
Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
All Mars Resources
Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…
Rover Basics
Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…
Mars Exploration: Science Goals
The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…
View the full article
-
-
Check out these Videos
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.