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NASA's Mars Exploration Program (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Sol 4175: Don’t Blink We’re Taking a Picture
The images for panorama obtained by the rover's 34-millimeter Mast Camera. The mosaic, which stretches about 30,000 pixels width, includes 331 images taken on Sol 4175 (May 5, 2024).
Curiosity loves to drive so it’s pretty rare we stay at a location longer than one planning cycle without the intention of drilling. But since we found ourselves at this unique and beautiful rubbly ridge with dark-toned clasts all around, the science team decided to skip driving last plan and stay through most of the weekend in favor of more contact science. My job this week was operating the Mastcams, and we decided to take full advantage of this opportunity! Why not take an afternoon 360-degree panorama while we’re here? It’s understandably hard to argue against a full panorama, so we went for it and planned 331 Mastcam Left images that should cover most of the terrain around us (including a custom arm pose to get the ridge in better view). Since our left filter wheel got stuck last fall, occluding over half of our lens, we’ve had to subframe our images quite a bit to avoid any filter wheel hardware showing up and thus — our Mastcam Left frame size covers less than half what it use to. It’s extremely lucky we’re still able to use the camera at all, and we’re very happy to keep planning 360 panos after all these years even if it takes about 2.5x more images to acquire.
Now for the reason we stayed: a full evening of contact science on the first sol! APXS and MAHLI are planning to investigate a light-toned, layered but somehow still crunchy, rock named "Liberty Cap" and another similar rock named "Wilma Lake." Liberty Cap imaging will also include a different type of MAHLI stereo where the turret rotates instead of moves laterally, called “rotational” stereo (or: “Herkenhoff” stereo after Ken Herkenhoff, a long-time MAHLI Co-Investigator among many other titles). Without any APXS support, MAHLI will also take a look at a pointy, dark-toned target named "Lookout Peak." I sit right next to the MAHLI operations team and was trying my best to keep up with all they have going on today. On the second sol, we drive! To be honest, there’s a ton more we planned today (including mid-drive and post-drive Mastcam imaging!) but this blog could go on and on with how packed this plan is. It’s always a little nerve-wracking sending a plan like this up to Mars before checking out for the weekend, but I’ll try my best and come back fresh for more Mastcam imaging on Monday. Written by Natalie Moore Other panoramas of Mars by Curiosity rover:
Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems
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The planet Earth has proven to be too limiting for our awesome community of panorama photographers. We're getting an increasing number of submissions that depict locations either not on Earth (like Mars, the Moon, and Outer Space in general) or do not realistically represent a geographic location on Earth (either because they have too many special effects or are computer generated) and hence don't strictly qualify for our Panoramic World project.But many of these panoramas are extremely beautiful or popular of both.So, in order to accommodate our esteemed photographers and the huge audience that they attract to 360Cities with their panoramas, we've created a new section (we call it an "area") called "Out of this World" for panoramas like these.Don't let the fact that these panoramas are being placed at the Earth's South Pole fool you - we had to put them somewhere in order not to interfere with our Panoramic World.Welcome aboard on a journey "Out of this World".
