The Curiosity rover has been attempting to climb a canyon to reach a cluster of craters, but the terrain has proved too challenging. The rover has been unable to make significant progress, so the team decided to try a new route. The new route is less steep, which should help the rover make progress among the mixture of fines and bedrock blocks. The rover has been conducting a lot of great science this week, including collecting data on the soil target “Saul” and observing sand slumps. The team also planned a long distance ChemCam RMI mosaic towards Peace Vallis and the distant crater rim, and a number of environmental monitoring observations including cloud and dust devil movies and observations of atmospheric opacity. On Friday, the team discovered that there was not sufficient progress to continue on this route, so they collected their final observations in this vicinity and set their sights on a new route to the east. The plan for the next two sols includes ChemCam assessing the chemistry of two bedrock blocks in the workspace, Mastcam acquiring multispectral observations on rocks and veins, and additional environmental monitoring observations. The team hopes that the new route will lead to easier terrain ahead.
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