In today's plan, we got to exercise our combined APXS-MAHLI touch and go capability. Now that our days on Mars are starting a bit earlier thanks to Earth rising earlier in the morning sky, APXS gets a cooler time to operate on days we also drive.

So the APXS-MAHLI teams are back to being regular partners in exploration once again. Today's workspace was much like our last one, lumpy and bumpy, as seen in the MAHLI 5 cm image above from our last workspace (for scale, the image is ~5 cm wide). Lumps and bumps like this are interesting because they suggest the bedrock did not sit around idly after formation - something stuck the grains of this rock a bit more tightly together than their neighboring grains, leading to more resistant lumps.

APXS looks for the chemical fingerprint of what might have caused the lumps, and MAHLI gets to gaze at their intricate textures. Together we targeted a similar feature in today's workspace, called "Mau." MAHLI also had a look at linear depression in the sand around the workspace bedrock that had an interesting distribution of pebbles around its perimeter, called "Univini."

ChemCam also got in on the lumpy bumpy fun, targeting a different lump from APXS and MAHLI at "Cumate." They will also capture the ever-nearing marker band outcrop with a 12 image RMI mosaic. Mastcam will acquire an expansive stereo mosaic of the amazing scenery that we are driving into, and a single multispectral footprint within that scene on an apparently bright block, called "Maraca."

Our drive will continue our beeline west toward a spot where we can access the marker band and points beyond. After the drive, ChemCam will acquire an autonomously-targeted raster to give us an early look at our weekend home for science. Navcam will look for dust devils and clouds. Throughout the plan, we have multiple DAN passive measurements, punctuated by two DAN active measurements. REMS and RAD run steadily across both sols.

Full Caption
Using an onboard focusing process, the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) aboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity created this product by merging two to eight images previously taken by the MAHLI, located on the turret at the end of the rover's robotic arm.

Curiosity performed the merge on October 26, 2022, Sol 3633 of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission, at 01:27:25 UTC. The focus motor count position was 13932. This number indicates the lens position of the first image that was merged.

The onboard focus merge is sometimes performed on images acquired the same sol as the merge, and sometimes uses pictures obtained on an earlier sol. Focus merging is a method to make a composite of images of the same target acquired at different focus positions to bring all (or, as many as possible) features into focus in a single image.

Because the MAHLI focus merge is performed on Mars, it also serves as a means to reduce the number of images sent back to Earth. Each focus merge produces two images: a color, best-focus product and a black-and-white image that scientists can use to estimate focus position for each element of the best focus product. Thus, up to eight images can be merged, reducing the number of images returned to Earth to two.

Related Links
Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory
Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com
Lunar Dreams and more

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Trying to Avoid Nodules: Sols 3633-3634
Pasadena CA (JPL) Oct 28, 2022
The long Sol 3631 drive went well, leaving the rover near exposures of nodule-rich bedrock. Because we have examined the chemical composition of nodules recently, a goal for today's planning was to find patches of bedrock that are relatively nodule-free in order to look for changes in the "background" bedrock. So the Sol 3633 plan starts with a couple APXS integrations on "Balata," a bedrock exposure with fewer nodules than other blocks in front of the rover. Then ChemCam will fire its laser at "A ... read more