Curiosity Blog, Sols 4580-4581: Something in the Air…
Written by Scott Vanbommel, planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis
Earth planning date: Monday, June 23, 2025
Curiosity was back to work on Monday, with a full list of planned activities. While summer has officially arrived for a large part of the Curiosity team on earth, the older rover in March is recently through the depths of the southern winter of March and trend towards warmer temperatures itself. Warm temperatures mean that heating less components is necessary and therefore more power is released for science and driving. However, the cooler current temperatures offer an opportunity to acquire short quality APX measures first in the morning, which has chosen to redo.
The curiosity plan started by brushing a rocky target with potential cross -cutting veins, “hornitos” and analyzing it later with APX. A sequence of mastcam images followed on targets such as “Volcán Peña Blanca”, “La Pacana”, “Iglesia de Jarinilla de Umatia” and “Ayparavi”. Chemcam, returning to action after a brief and understood break, completed the morning chemical analysis activities with a 5 -point analysis from Ayparavi. After a few images of the brush, and a handful of Mahli clichés from Cornitos, curiosity was on the way with a planned training of about 37 meters (about 121 feet). The night of curiosity would not be spent entirely to dream of what the Rovers dream, but rather leading a long apxs analysis of the atmosphere. These analyzes allow the Curiosity team to assess the abundance of the argon in the atmosphere – from a volume on the size of a pop box (or soda, depending on your unit preferably) – which can be used to trace global circulation models and better understand modern Mars. Recently, curiosity has increased the frequency of these measures and associated with “passive sky” observations of chemicam. These chemicam activities do not use the instrument laser, but rather use its other components to characterize the air above the rover. By combining the APX and Chemcam observations of the atmosphere, the Curiosity team is able to better assess the daily and seasonal trends of the gases around the Gale crater. A “passive sky” Chemcam was the main observation in the second soil of the plan, curiosity spending a large part of the time remaining to recharge and impatiently awaiting orders from the Wednesday team.
