Curiosity Blog, Sols 4604-4606: Taking a Deep Breath of Martian Air

Written by Lauren Edgar, planetary geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center

Earth planning date: Friday July 18, 2025

Curiosity has started to study the main exhibition of boxwork structures! What was once a distant target is now at our door, and curiosity is starting to explore the crests and hollows that make up this ground, to better understand their chemistry, their morphology and their sedimentary structures.

I was in a quarter of work as a long -term planner during this three -soil weekend plan, and the team set up a very complete set of activities to carefully investigate this site – from the Sand sky. The plan begins with the Navcam and Mastcam observations to assess the amount of dust in the atmosphere, followed by a large mosaic Mastcam to characterize the resistant ridge on which the rover is parked. Chemcam also acquires an observation of Libs on a target called “vicuna” to assess the chemistry of a well exposed vein. The team has chosen this parking place to characterize the chemistry and the textures of this topographic ridge (to be compared with the topographic stockings), so that the following part of the plan implies the science of contact with APXS and Mahli to look at different parts of the nodular substratum in our workspace, on targets called “Totoral” and “Sillar”. There is also a Mahli observation of the same vein as targeted chemcam.

The second floor implies more mastcam imaging to look at different parts of this prominent crest, as well as an observation of chemicam libs above the ridge, and a mosaic Chemcam RMI to document the sedimentary structures in a characteristic distant from Boxwork. Navcam will also be used to find Dust Devils. Then, curiosity will take a short route of about 5 meters (about 16 feet) to explore the adjacent hollow (considered the low point in the foreground of the navcam image above). After the disc, we will take more images for the context and to prepare to target in the Monday plan.

After all this work, it is time to take a break and breathe deeply … from the Martian atmosphere. The weekend plan involves an exciting campaign to seek variations in atmospheric chemistry between night and day. Curiosity will therefore take an atmospheric observation APXs overnight as two instruments within Sam evaluate its chemical and isotopic abundance.

On the third soil, curiosity will acquire an observation of the passive CHEMCAM sky, leading to a large set of atmospheric data. These measures will be compared to even more atmospheric activities in the Monday plan to obtain the full image. As you can imagine, this plan requires a lot of power, but it is worth it for all the exciting science that we can accomplish here.

The coming road has many ups and downs (literally), but I can’t wait to see what curiosity will accomplish. The distant buttons remind us that there is so much more to explore, and I can’t wait to continue to see where curiosity will take us.