Curiosity Blog, Sols 4638-4640: Imaging Extravaganza Atop a Ridge

Written by Conor Hayes, a graduate student at York University

Earth planning date: Friday August 22, 2025

Curiosity continues its winding path through the mysterious boxwork structures which have been a major objective of the last months of the mission. After having driven out of “río frío”, we are now parked on a ridge overlooking a topographic depression that we have nicknamed the “thumb”. The image on this post shows that the crest turns along the edge of the “thumb”. Our goal today is to characterize this ridge before going down in the thumb.

Because we had a lot of power and three floors available to play with this weekend plan is filled with good sciences. The boxwork structures in our immediate vicinity receive a lot of attention, with planned mastic images of the targets “Walatiri”, “Walatiri 2”, “Mojo”, “Samaipata”, “Fort Samaipata” and “Río Lluta”, as well as in a neighboring hollow. Chemcam will also take Libs measures from Samaipata and Fort Saaipata. Samaipata attracts Mahli’s attention even more, in addition to the “Vitichi” and “Tartagalita” targets, which will also be observed by APXS.

However, boxwork structures do not obtain all the pleasure today. In addition to all boxwork observations, Mastcam will document the target of the chemcam aegis on Monday plan and will also be more imaging of the “Mishe Mokwa”. The highest point of Mastcam’s work in this plan (at least in my opinion) is the great mosaic at 44 images from the edge of the northern crater, taking advantage of the particularly low dust of the atmosphere at this time of the year. Chemcam will take several RMI images of Mishe Mokwa and an outcrop from the “dragons” to which we will lead in the coming months, as well as the usual post-training aegis.

To complete this plan, a collection of atmosphere observations. In addition to the typical activities of Dan, REMS and RAD, the Curiosity Navcam will be put to work with a dust film, a dust-divided survey, five cloud films and two observations of the North Crater Rim’s aim. Mastcam is also involved in environmental pleasure with a Tau to follow the amount of dust in the air.

Even with all these activities, we decided that we have not yet finished with this area. The journey of today’s plan is a short bump of about 2 meters (about 6.6 feet), so we are all looking forward to continuing our investigation into this ridge on Monday.