Mars Science Laboratory Mission Team Members.
Written by Michelle Minitti, MAHLI Deputy Principal Investigator.
Earth planning date: Friday, Oct. 1, 2026.
Most Curiosity plans involve mosaics from Mastcam and ChemCam, chemistry analyses from ChemCam and APXS, images from MAHLI and MARDI, and systematic measurements from REMS, RAD, and DAN. The CheMin data were key to SAM deciding to analyze the sample at all, and SAM will wait to receive the results from the TLS run to decide if they want to follow up with a separate mass spectrometry analysis next week.
The laboratory activities need a portion of the daily power budget of the rover so the rest of the payload takes a back seat during drill campaigns, a worthy trade for CheMin and SAM’s valuable data. Its color and improved resolution relative to Navcam also guided subsequent science requests, such as more focused Mastcam imaging of structures near the workspace, and ChemCam RMI imaging of the “Cordillera” butte. ChemCam gathered more chemistry data from the variety of materials in the workspace, from the Basque Lakes drill hole interior, to sand ripples ("French Creek”) covering the bedrock, to loose gray clasts of unknown origin (“Wooley" and “Fireside”) sprinkled across the workspace.