Still hanging in there: Sols 4043-4044:

Still hanging in there: Sols 4043-4044:

by Alex Innanen | Atmospheric Scientist – York University

Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 22, 2023

Earth planning date: Wednesday, December 20, 2023: It was a bit of deja vu today as we arrived to find that we weren’t successful in getting out of the wheelie. In fact, we’re in almost exactly the same position we were on Monday, and our wheel is still off the ground. This meant more remote science for us.

As the ENV theme lead, that doesn’t change my plans very much – all of our science is remote! On the geo side, a bit more thought was needed as to what would replace the contact science. Luckily there’s still plenty to look at in our current location, as you can see from the HazCam image above.

Like yesterday, ChemCam and Mastcam are getting workouts, and a lot of targets got new names. ChemCam has two LIBS targets – ‘Big Pothole Lakes’ and ‘Bighorn Plateau’ – as well as another four mosaics – ‘Enchanted Gorge,’ ‘Texoli’ and ‘Big Wall’ as well as continuing to look at the upper Gediz Vallis Ridge.

Appropriate names for a big day of planning! Mastcam is joining in on the big fun with mosaics of the two LIBS targets and a couple targets of their own – ‘Silver Maiden’ and ‘Ouzel Creek.’

On the ENV side, we’re taking advantage of the dusty season to hunt for dust devils. We’ve got a dust devil movie and survey in the plan, as well as a tau observation to monitor how dusty the atmosphere is getting overall.

An advantage of our deja vu plan is we got a little extra power, which meant we could extend the dust devil movie and add in a suprahorizon movie. Usually, we use these movies to look for clouds, which tend to be a bit sparser at this time of year. But the suprahorizon movie sometimes gets “photo-bombed” by dust devils, which is like getting two observations for the price of one!