I'm SOWG Chair again today, planning Sol 513, which will be dominated by a full set of MAHLI images of wheels. The images will be taken between short drives, to turn the wheels a bit and allow the entire surfaces of the wheels to be imaged. This will require a fair amount of power, so the main constraint on science planning was ensuring that we don't take too much charge out of the battery. But we were still able to add some post-drive science, including a DAN active measurement of hydrogen below the surface, a Navcam cloud search, and the usual imaging needed to plan targeted observations on Sol 514. The command sequences must be sent to the rover by about 5 PM Pacific time, so planning started 1.5 hours earlier than usual--not as early as yesterday though, when it was still dark when I drove in to work.
Written by Ken Herkenhoff, Planetary Geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center
