Sol 18 Summary

Science Assessment Meeting

The Sol 17 drive to the white line target appears to have been successful except that the rover went passed the target by about 0.5 meters. The DTE hazcam and pancam data show that the white line target could be a mud cracked area and, thus, be a high priority for trenching.

Planning for Sol 18 will be focused on determining how to move the rover into position to trench this putative mud-cracked surface. If a trench is successful on Sol 18, in-situ measurements will be done on Sol 19 and include measurements in the trench and a nearby area of undisturbed material within the same surface unit. One consideration in the planning is the fact that the Sol 19 will only have 34 m DSN station coverage, which greatly reduces that amount of data that can be transmitted on the DTE link for planning use.

SOWG Meeting and Sequence Summary

Sol 18 was planned as a trenching sol. The target of the trench is bright area that appears to contain mud cracks. The consensus of the SOWG was to attempt to excavate a trench in this material. The uplinked sequence included:

• Four MiniTES observations of the sky were planned to study turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer. The measurements will be made looking at two areas of the sky with pairs of measurements separated in time by two minutes.
• Other atmospheric observations that were requested included a color pancam wedge of the sky and a Moon photometry sequence with navcam and pancam images.

The trench plan included supporting remote sensing observations and a small move of the rover to the target for the trench.

• Remote sensing support: Two MiniTES observations of material targeted on Chantry and Bonanza. IPS observations were a single point of Chantry (possible soil, maybe a rock) and 3x3 array centered on Bonanza (soil/rock trench target). In addition, a rear looking pancam color mosaic was planned to view the tracks leading up to the current location.
• Trenching operations: The rover was commanded to move back approximately 1 meter to position the front wheels on the Bonanza target. Trenching will be attempted by locking five wheels and rotating the remaining wheel three times in the backwards direction. After the trenching has completed, the rover will move back an additional 0.5 meters to place the trench in the arm work area. Front and rear hazcam images will be acquired at the end of the post-trenching move. Trenching will test whether the Bonanza target is a mud-cracked soil or harder exposed bedrock.

Note that the front hazcam image will be sent back on the following DTE link for next sol planning.

After the trenching activity, a 360 degree navcam mosaic and a 120 degree pancam mosaic will be acquired to provide data for planning the next drive location. The pancam mosaic will be acquired on Sol 18, but will not be returned until the Sol 19 UHF link because the Sol 18 UHF link was full.

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