NASA Curiosity (Mars Rover)

Curiosity Blog, Sols 4682-4688: Seven Mars Years [Nov. 13]

Back in August, we celebrated 13 Earth years since Curiosity landed in Gale back in 2012. This Monday, Oct. 6, a bit after 1 a.m. UTC (8 p.m. EDT Oct. 5), our intrepid rover marked its seventh full Mars year on the surface. (Because Mars is farther from the Sun than Earth is, a year on Mars — or one full trip around the Sun — lasts 687 Earth days.) Curiosity is only the second vehicle on Mars to reach that milestone, behind only Opportunity. Although Curiosity has not yet matched Opportunity's longevity or distance driven, over the last seven Mars years we have put together the longest and most comprehensive record of the modern Martian climate. REMS has been recording weather conditions at least once an hour almost every hour since 2012, and RAD has now measured surface radiation conditions for more than a full solar cycle, data that will be critical to future human exploration of Mars. We've taken more than 3,000 cloud movies and countless more observations of atmospheric opacity, dust lifting, and dust-devil activity. I've been a member of our environmental science team for just over five (Earth) years now (or about 2 ½ Mars years), and I can still hardly believe that I've been able to help contribute to this incredible legacy. Although our well-traveled rover is now in its fifth Extended Mission, as a team we have no intention of slowing down any time soon.
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Curiosity Blog, Sols 4716-4722: Drilling Success at Nevado Sajama [Nov. 18]

From Curiosity's ridge-top perch among the boxwork unit, the highlight of the week was the successful drilling of the “Nevado Sajama” target. The data collected by APXS, ChemCam, and MAHLI from the rover workspace and its immediate vicinity gave the team confidence to proceed with sampling. APXS and ChemCam data from two targets cleared by the DRT — Nevado Sajama (before it was drilled) and “Tesoro del Pangal” — demonstrated that the chemistry of the workspace was in family with the many ridge-top targets analyzed during the boxwork unit campaign. MAHLI imaging revealed the presence of fine veins in both targets, and also confirmed the structural soundness of the drill target after the rover engineers tested the strength of Nevado Sajama by pressing down on it with the drill tip. The types of veins observed by MAHLI were investigated by ChemCam on broken bedrock faces that exposed both bright white and gray materials. These targets, “Arenas Blancas,” “Camarones,” and “Exaltación,” will provide more insight into the fluids that penetrated the boxwork ridges, perhaps contributing to their erosion resistance. DAN collected data for long stretches across the sols over which all these activities occurred, gaining data on the hydrogen (and by extrapolation, water) content of the ridge. Mastcam began and will continue to build a large mosaic of our location which will include both Nevado Sajama and the drill target “Valle de la Luna” within an adjacent hollow.

The rover payload was not only focused on studying the ridge and drill target, but also added to the systematic environmental dataset Curiosity has built over the last 13 years. REMS and RAD regularly recorded Martian and space weather, respectively, throughout the week. Mastcam and Navcam measured dust loading in the atmosphere, and looked for clouds and dust devils while ChemCam and APXS took turns measuring different chemical components in the atmosphere.

The drill activity itself completed on Sol 4718. This weekend, the first portions of the drilled material will be delivered to and analyzed by CheMin. The whole team is anxiously awaiting the CheMin results in order to compare them to the Valle de la Luna mineralogy derived from the hollow below us. We hope their comparison will provide us with new insights into how the boxwork unit came to be.
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Curiosity Blog, Sols 4750-4762: See You on the Other Side of the Sun [Dec. 22]

This holiday season coincides with conjunction — every two years, because of their different orbits, Earth and Mars are obstructed from one another by the Sun; this one will last from Dec. 27 to Jan. 20. We do not like to send commands through the Sun in case they get scrambled, so we have been finishing up a few last scientific observations before preparing Curiosity for its quiet conjunction break.
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The rover engineers then successfully orchestrated Curiosity’s drive back up onto the nearby ridge to ensure a safe parking spot over conjunction. We documented the drive with a MARDI sidewalk video, tracking how the terrain beneath the rover changes as we drive. Although we could not use APXS and MAHLI on the robotic arm from Friday on, owing to constraints that need to be in place prior to conjunction, we were able to use the rover’s Mastcam to image areas of interest in the near field, which will help us with our planned activities when we return from conjunction. These will hopefully include getting chemistry (with APXS and ChemCam) and imaging (with MAHLI) of some freshly broken rock surfaces that we drove over.
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Much earlier in the mission, the Curiosity team used these LEDs at night to look for layering or other features in drill hole walls that would help them understand a rock’s composition. Since the mission changed its drilling method, the drill holes have come out too rough and dusty to see any such details.

After drilling a rock target nicknamed “Nevado Sajama” on Nov. 13, 2025 (Sol 4,718), the team noticed the drill hole walls were smooth enough to try looking for layers and decided to try illuminating the drill hole at night. This drill hole was made during Curiosity’s exploration of a region full of geologic formations called boxwork, which crisscross the surface for miles and look like giant spiderwebs when viewed from space.
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https://science.nasa.gov/resource/curiosity-lights-up-nevado-sajama-at-night/
 
Snips from FY27 budget request:
2011 MARS SCIENCE LABORATORY
The 2011 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, Curiosity, is collecting Martian soil and rock samples and analyzing them for organic compounds and environmental conditions favorable for microbial life, using its cameras, spectrometers, and the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite. To look for signs of water that may lie below the rover, a radiation detector pointed downward measures hydrogen up to three feet below the surface. The team expects the Curiosity radioisotope thermal generator to produce enough power into the 2030s to enable the continued exploration and assessment of Martian regions with potential as past habitats for life.
The Curiosity rover is also providing regular measurements of the Martian atmosphere and weather, including temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, and wind on the Martian surface. A radiation detector regularly monitors high-energy radiation at the Martian surface.
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The Radiation Assessment Detector instrument on the Curiosity rover provides space environment data at Mars,
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FY27 request is for $38.0M with the future forecast of $38.0M each year through FY31.
 
Curiosity Blog: Sols 4913-4919: Planetary Explorers, Freewheeling to the Yardang Unit! [June 10]

In a very broad sense, Curiosity has two modes of doing science – one centred around a defined science campaign (such as the recent boxwork campaign) and the other as we move between campaigns. During a science campaign, with a very defined start and end location, every image and every workspace is carefully choregraphed to make sure we hit all of our science goals for the campaign. This is a lot of pressure!

But in between campaigns, the emphasis moves to driving towards the next major campaign. Our next major stop is the yardang unit, a series of intriguing wind sculpted, pale coloured hills which you can just see in the distance in the cover image for this blog. The rover planners (RPs) sometimes make our drives as long as they can and we drive as far as we can go, other times we stop a little short to look at interesting looking workspaces as we go. As part of the APXS team, I loved being part of the boxwork campaign and getting all the information we needed there … but as a geologist, there is something very special about this kind of exploring, the sense of being a planetary explorer, ambling along to see what the rocks will show us.
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