Written by Susan B. Shoinzer, professor of planetary minerals at the Open University, UK
Earth Planning date: Friday, September 19, 2025
Curiosity currently leads along the very uneven terrain hills. One of the largest hills we called “Autobahn”, the German word for a fast road. But Rover did not remain on that Autobahn, who is now the most name “Arare”, for a very long time. Instead, he went on a journey along many smaller hills and even in some hollow. You can get a good impression of the scene in the image above, or view a wider panorama image here.
Today, I was the head of the Scientific Operations Group (SWG), the presidency responsible for coordinating all scientific planning and ensuring that we remain within the budgets of power and data. Since we get to know a lot of photography hills and hollows, team members also maintain APXS and LIBS are busy planning to investigate the chemistry of the hills peaks, sides of the hills, and of course the rocks inside the hollow, the demands of power and the size of the data are high. Besides “geographical” notes, we are still in the APHELION season and we want to make sure that we pick up enough air and environmental notes as well. In every plan, the Dan camera and Marddy camera are viewed regularly. Dan tells us about hydrogen on the surface below the surface under the Rover, which is probably associated with water -bearing minerals. Mardi documents the rocks located under the Rover, which is more accurate below the left front wheel.
With a lot of demands, and the fact that we are just getting out of Mars winter, where cold temperatures require more heating to keep safe Rover, there was a lot of demand for energy budgets throughout this week. Thus, his colleagues and I in the chair of Soujouji held many discussions to facilitate them. What amazes me every time about our team, though, is the smoothness of these discussions and the extent of our understanding about the season and the films of each other. It is great to see how smoothly – as a team – discover what is the maximum priority on a specific planning day.
After a set of good discussions, and the luck that was stopped in a stable location for each planning cycle, we had many ARM activities. APXS and MAHLI focused on measuring and photographing the tops of the hills – we call them the basis – and that basis looks very smooth on the top of the hills. The goals were measured “Turbio”, “Río Aguas Blancas” and “ISIBORO” and photographed earlier in the week, and today it was “Colonia Santa Rosa” and “Le Lentias”. (I learn the Spanish as we go; all these names are from the Ayoni region in South America. You can read everything about it in the blog post, “Welcome to Uyuni Quad.” More chemical investigations by Chemcam were added using the LIBS tool on a wide range of the most smooth foundation, completing APXs notes in many places, then adding chemical information from sites that have more contrasting features such as veins, doctrines and fractures.
MastCam and Chemcam, through its distant pictures, takes pictures of many different features in the scene. You can see its contrast in the picture at the top of the blog. What matters to us is the variation of all these features, but also how they relate to each other. Are some features always at the head of others, or does the veins cut fractures? These are the questions that we can answer with pictures that are taken from a distance of the broader context, then closely to see all the details. We took general photos like those in the picture above, and we took images closely with a distance reporting, and of course Maahli. Many of these images come from the sides of the hills because this allows us to see the “rock registry”, and how the hills are built. If you look at the image above closely, you can see some of this yourself. You can also discover some patterns. Hill tops are smoother, at least. Thus, “Autobahn” was called in the first place! A woven looks more rough and more messy as well.
With all the excitement about rocks, we have not forgotten environmental notes. This includes the temperature and wind, but also photographing the atmosphere in order to obscure and search for dust demons. We just got out of the season with the least dust in the air. This allowed us to do first the mission: the image rocks outside the edge of the hole, 90 km (about 56 miles)! We are very enthusiastic about those images that are taken using a precise notification of microergi and with the MSTCAM context. They show more than the edge of the hole, and what will be the source of the source of some of the sediments we have seen very early in the mission, when we explored the Paace Vallis fan! Look at WidespreadThis is close to the rocks, 90 km away, with The distant micro -jurisdiction.