Curiosity, NASA's plucky Martian geologist on wheels, is finally pulling out of the driveway at 'Campo Marte' after its 47th successful drilling operation. The rover spent the week doing what it does best: poking, prodding, and photographing rocks while the rest of us argue about things that matter far less.
Drilling keeps a rover grounded - literally - and the team made the most of it by running the CheMin and SAM instruments to analyze the drill fines, while ChemCam, APXS, MAHLI, and Mastcam documented the hole with the enthusiasm of a real estate photographer. ChemCam even pulled off a targeting exercise that would make a sniper jealous: aiming at millimeter-sized targets named 'Corcovado' and 'Junakas' about 3 meters (10 feet) away. Because on Mars, even rock layers get names before we judge them for their chemical differences.
In a move that screams 'we have nothing better to do,' ChemCam also planned a 24-frame long-distance RMI mosaic that might be the longest strip of RMI images ever taken by Curiosity - at 13+ years old, the rover is still breaking its own records. 'How cool is that?' asked the team, rhetorically, as if anyone would say no.
Mastcam got busy imaging the entire region, including a high-resolution mosaic of the dropped sample and the workspace to see if any leftover sample shook out of the drill stem. MAHLI, meanwhile, kept an eye on the sample inlets, where a small rock has become what the CheMin team affectionately calls 'our pet rock.' APXS increased its counting statistics by measuring the Campo Marte drill fines in all plans this week, culminating in a nighttime MAHLI experiment with LED lights - because rocks deserve a glamour shot too.
The environmental team kept the rover busy monitoring atmospheric opacity, dust activity, and dust-devil activity, because even on Mars, the weather is boring but necessary. With all that done, Curiosity will continue up the hill toward the next interesting area, where someone mentioned 'cross-bedding' - a term that excites sediment experts far more than mineralogists, who are just itching to see the CheMin results.