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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 4609–4610: Recharged and Ready To Roll Onwards
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image showing the boxwork hollow where it is investigating, and the boxwork ridge on the far side of the hollow, using its Left Navigation Camera. Curiosity captured the image on July 20, 2025 — Sol 4605, or Martian day 4,605 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 18:51:55 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick
Earth planning date: Wednesday, July 23, 2025
For today’s planning, we were in the same workspace as the Monday plan — on purpose! We don’t often have a plan without a drive but in order to allow the battery to recover from some power-hungry SAM atmospheric measurements over the weekend and on Monday, we needed to stay put and skip our usual drive. As a result, we gained a bonus planning cycle at this interesting workspace.
We are in one of the “hollows” between the resistant ridges of the “boxwork” terrain, as you can see in the image for this blog. This made for a quieter Operations day for me as the APXS planner. As Deborah noted in Monday’s blog, we have already gotten three APXS and MAHLI measurements in this workspace, so we didn’t acquire more in this plan.
This morning, we focused on documenting some small light-toned, rounded, white pebbles in the workspace (you can see them in the accompanying Navcam image), which look very different from the underlying bedrock. We used our one ChemCam LIBS analysis for the plan on “Yana Qaqa.” Mastcam will image this pebble, another at “Ojos del Salado,” and a really cool-looking target with a dendritic-looking texture at “Punta de Lobos.”
Further afield, Mastcam will image the adjacent boxwork ridge and hollow in our drive direction, and a series of troughs with raised edges to the right of our current workspace. ChemCam will image a long-distance RMI mosaic of “Cueva de los Vencejos y Murciélagos,” which was imaged by Mastcam on Monday, and also acquire some further images of the “Mishe Mokwa” hill.
We had a bumper couple of sols of atmospheric measurements over the weekend and Monday. Now we revert back to our more normal environmental and atmospheric monitoring. These do not get as much attention sometimes as the amazing images we take of the fascinating rocks we see, but have been taking place consistently and continuously since Curiosity’s landing almost 13 years ago now. This plan includes a series of Navcam movies (suprahorizon, dust devil) and a line-of-sight observation of dust, standard REMS and DAN observations, and two Mastcam tau measurements, looking at dust in the atmosphere.
Our 24-meter drive (almost 79 feet) will take us out of this hollow and back up on top of a ridge. From here, we hope to be able to spy the best driving path through the boxwork. The ridges are up to 5 meters in diameter (about 16 feet), so we are cautiously hopeful that we can just trundle along one of the ridges as we investigate this fascinating terrain.
For more Curiosity blog posts, visit MSL Mission Updates
Learn more about Curiosity’s science instruments
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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 NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image, looking south across the large boxwork structures, using its Left Navigation Camera on July 17, 2025. A series of ridges and hollows forms the dramatic topography in the foreground, while the distant buttes expose additional sedimentary structures. Curiosity acquired this image on Sol 4602, or Martian day 4,602 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission, at 17:49:18 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Lauren Edgar, Planetary Geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center
Earth planning date: Friday, July 18, 2025
Curiosity has started to investigate the main exposure of the boxwork structures! What was once a distant target is now on our doorstep, and Curiosity is beginning to explore the ridges and hollows that make up this terrain, to better understand their chemistry, morphology, and sedimentary structures.
I was on shift as Long Term Planner during this three-sol weekend plan, and the team put together a very full set of activities to thoroughly investigate this site — from the sky to the sand. The plan starts with Navcam and Mastcam observations to assess the amount of dust in the atmosphere, followed by a large Mastcam mosaic to characterize the resistant ridge on which the rover is parked. ChemCam will also acquire a LIBS observation on a target named “Vicuna” to assess the chemistry of a well-exposed vein. The team chose this parking location to characterize the chemistry and textures of this topographic ridge (to compare with topographic lows), so the next part of the plan involves contact science using APXS and MAHLI to look at different parts of the nodular bedrock in our workspace, at targets named “Totoral” and “Sillar.” There’s also a MAHLI observation of the same vein that ChemCam targeted.
The second sol involves more Mastcam imaging to look at different parts of this prominent ridge, along with a ChemCam LIBS observation on top of the ridge, and a ChemCam RMI mosaic to document the sedimentary structures in a distant boxwork feature. Navcam will also be used to look for dust devils. Then Curiosity will take a short drive of about 5 meters (about 16 feet) to explore the adjacent hollow (seen as the low point in the foreground of the above Navcam image). After the drive we’ll take more images for context, and to prepare for targeting in Monday’s plan.
After all of this work it’s time to pause and take a deep breath… of Martian atmosphere. The weekend plan involves an exciting campaign to look for variations in atmospheric chemistry between night and day. So Curiosity will take an overnight APXS atmospheric observation at the same time that two instruments within SAM assess its chemical and isotopic abundance.
On the third sol Curiosity will acquire a ChemCam passive sky observation, leading to a great set of atmospheric data. These measurements will be compared to even more atmospheric activities in Monday’s plan to get the full picture. As you can imagine, this plan requires a lot of power, but it’s worth it for all of the exciting science that we can accomplish here.
The road ahead has many highs and lows (literally), but I can’t wait to see what Curiosity will accomplish. The distant buttes remind us that there’s so much more to explore, and I look forward to continuing to see where Curiosity will take us.
For more Curiosity blog posts, visit MSL Mission Updates
Learn more about Curiosity’s science instruments
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These images captured by the Curiosity rover in 2014 reveals yet another unexplained aerial phenomenon in the Martian atmosphere, a cigar-shaped object with a consistent width and rounded ends.
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