Earth Planning Date: Wednesday, July 3, 2024 We received the data from our SAM analysis of the Mammoth Lakes sample late Monday afternoon. After chewing over the results, the team declared we are very happy with all of the analyses we’ve done with this sample, and we are ready to move on to greener pastures……

Earth planning date: Monday, July 1, 2024 Have you ever wondered what it might look like to ride along with the rover? Probably not as much as we have here on the planning team, where we are looking at the images on a daily basis. I always wish I could walk around there myself, or…

Earth Planning Date: Friday, June 28, 2024 After reviewing results from the Evolved Gas Analysis (EGA) experiment that were downlinked yesterday afternoon (Sols 4226-4228: A Powerful Balancing Act), the SAM team decided they’d like to go ahead with a second experiment to analyze the Mammoth Lakes 2 drilled sample. This experiment is known as the…

Earth planning date: Tuesday, June 25, 2024 As documented in a previous blog last week, we continue to juggle power constraints as we focus on analyzing our newest drilled sample on Mars: “Mammoth Lakes 2.” Today, the star of the show is a planned dropoff to SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars instrument suite) and evolved…

Upon the rover’s arrival at Bright Angel, it was so exciting to see all the interesting features in the rocks of this interval! In particular, these rocks contain an abundance of veins and nodules. Veins are linear features containing mineral crystals that often form thin plates or sheets that cut through the rocks and across…

Earth planning date: Monday, June 24, 2024 This will be an important week for chemistry on our latest drill sample “Mammoth Lakes 2.”  Curiosity’s primary goal today was a preconditioning of the SAM instrument in preparation for its chemical analysis. Due to the large amounts of power required by SAM, today’s science block was limited…

Earth planning date: Friday, June 21, 2024 All our patient waiting has been rewarded, as we were greeted with the news that our drill attempt of “Mammoth Lakes 2” was successful! You can see the drill hole in the image above, as well as the first place we attempted just to the left. The actual…

Last week, Perseverance arrived at the long-awaited site of Bright Angel, named for being a light-toned rock that stands out in orbital data.

Earth planning date: Monday, June 17, 2024 Who thought it was a good idea to select a name with the word ‘mammoth’ in it? Well, we don’t remember who did it, and if we did, we wouldn’t say anyways… but these rocks take ‘Mammoth Lakes’ and seem to translate it into ‘Mammoth Effort’ for the team here on…

After months of driving, Perseverance has finally arrived at ‘Bright Angel’, discovering oddly textured rock unlike any the rover has seen before.