Earth planning date: Friday, Jan. 24, 2025

Fires are still burning in southern California, continuously affecting so many on our mission. Here in San Diego, where we operate the Mastcams (and MAHLI and MARDI) from Malin Space Science Systems, we can see the flames outside near the Mexican border. Thankfully we’re all safe and there is no immediate danger at this time. It’s a blessing to still be able to plan activities for Curiosity, and we were gifted with a standard, full weekend plan to take our minds off Earth for a bit. We came in with more power than modeled, we had a successful drive of about 29 meters (about 95 feet), and we passed SRAP to plan contact science! 

This weekend’s plan starts with a remote science block for ChemCam and Mastcam activities. ChemCam will shoot their laser diagonally through the “Beaudry” target (a polygonally-fractured block in the workspace) and take an RMI mosaic of the capping unit atop Wilkerson butte to the northwest. Mastcam follows up with about 120 images of ChemCam’s targets (for color!), a very layered block named “Mount Hollywood,” and another view of the Rustic Canyon crater — this time to search for ejecta material. 

After our remote science block we’ll have our contact science activities, spanning the hours of approximately 15:25-22:30 local Gale time. MAHLI and APXS will both investigate workspace targets “Little Jimmy” (some smooth gray stuff) and “Acton” (some chippy conglomerate). MAHLI will then go rogue and take another suite of images on “Wildhorse” (a potential meteorite!). 

The second sol is a lot quieter, finishing with another remote science block before driving away. We’ll take another Mastcam cloud survey post-drive at twilight, hoping for more of those white noctilucent wisps, before the season comes to a close and we wait another two Earth years (more or less). Hoping for clouds here on Earth this weekend, too!

Written by Natalie Moore, Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems