Curiosity Blog, Sols 4624-4626: A Busy Weekend at the Boxwork
Written by Alex Innanen, atmospheric scientist at the University of York
Earth planning date: Friday August 8, 2025
We continue to progress through the boxwork structures, arriving today in the crests of the “sign of peace” that we aimed in our last training. We spend the first two floors of the weekend in this place, learning everything we can on the boxwork edges all around us. Then we drive later and pass our third floor to our next location by making a slightly more targeted science.
Our first soil includes three scientific contact targets, “Palmira”, “Casicasi” and “Bococo”, which Mahli and APX will be well devoted. Chemcam also uses his Laser Libs to consult Bococo and takes a mosaic of more distant boxwork. In order not to be left out, Mastcam takes a mosaic of peaks in the shape of a sign of peace that meets, which have received the name “ayopaya”, as well as another mosaic on the edge of one of the nearby ridges. The Group of Environmental Sciences (ENV) also takes a dust film and a Cloud surpahorizon film.
During our second soil, Chemcam has another observation of the “Britania” Libs. Mastcam has more mosaics, looking back today on our wheel tracks to see what we could have presented on our disc, as well as on the most distant ridges. We also have another Cloud film coinciding with the imaging from above by the cassis camera aboard the trace gas orbit, trying to spot the same clouds from above and below. After our conduct, curiosity can take a nice nap before woken up early for our typical EMB block from the weekend, which includes three observations of different clouds (it’s always the cloud season, after all!) And two observations to look at the dust in the crater and in the sky above. Later in this Chemcam soil will use Aegis to choose a Libs target independently, we will have a 360 degree survey to try to catch Dust Devils. Finally, we mount our goal on the clouds, using shadows of clouds on Mount Sharp to estimate cloud altitudes.
