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NASA's Mars Exploration Program (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Sol 673: Out of the Ellipse
The images for panorama obtained by the rover's 34-millimeter Mast Camera. The mosaic, which stretches about 30,000 pixels width, includes 137 images taken on Sol 673 (June 28, 2014).
I'm MAHLI/MARDI uplink lead today, planning Sols 673-675 to get MSL through the weekend. It turned out to be a busy day, as the Sol 672 did not complete nominally. A 101-meter drive was planned, but after traversing 82 meters the rover stopped because it determined that it was slipping too much. As the vehicle was crossing some sandy ripples , the wheels encountered soft sand and the rover automatically detected that progress was not being made at the expected rate, and correctly halted the drive. Coincidentally, the rover stopped right on the landing ellipse, a major mission milestone! The vehicle was designed to be able to traverse far enough to drive out of the region defined by the uncertainty in the landing location, and has now achieved that laudable goal. We had been planning to acquire a full set of wheel images on Sol 673, but the current rover location is not suitable for this activity, so we decided to plan contact science instead. MAHLI images of a target Sourdough will be taken before placing the APXS on it and integrating overnight, in parallel with SAM scrubber cleaning. On Sol 674, the rover will drive out of the ripple, then turn around to get a better look at the location it is at now. The plan for the final sol (675) is dominated by cleaning of SAM's getter and trap. Dates of planned rover activities described in these reports are subject to change due to a variety of factors related to the Martian environment, communication relays and rover status.
Ken Herkenhoff
Other panoramas of Mars by Curiosity rover:
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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".
