2 min read
Sols 4452-4453: Keeping Warm and Keeping Busy NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the science targets before it, including “Catalina Island,” the flat rock at image center, using its Left Navigation Camera. The rover captured the image on sol 4450 — or Martian day 4,450 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Feb. 11, 2025, at 13:11:14 UTC. NASA/JPL-CaltechEarth planning Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025
I woke up this morning to my weather app telling me it felt like minus 15° C (5°F) outside. On days like this, it can take me a little longer to get myself up and out into the world. Curiosity has a similar problem — as we head toward winter and it gets colder and colder in Gale Crater, Curiosity has to spend more time warming up to do things like driving and all our good science. I’ve also been watching a couple winter storms that are expected in the next few days here in Toronto. Luckily, Curiosity doesn’t have to deal with snowstorms, and our drive in the last plan went ahead as planned and put us in a good position to go ahead with contact science today, a relief after having to forego it on Monday.
The contact science location that the geology team chose is called “Catalina Island,” the flat rock you can see in almost the center of the image above. As you can likely also see above, there’s a whole jumble of rocks in that image, and Mastcam and ChemCam have picked out a couple others to take a look at. These are “Point Dume,” which will be the target of ChemCam’s laser spectrometer, and “Whittier Narrows,” on which Mastcam will image some linear features. Mastcam and ChemCam are also turning their gazes further afield for Mastcam targets “Cleghorn Ridge,” “Cuyamaca Peak,” “Kratka Ridge,” and two long-distance ChemCam mosaics of the top of the Wilkerson butte and a spot a little further down known as “Pothole Trail.”
Much like I’m keeping an eye out the window on the changing weather here, Curiosity is also continuing to keep an eye on the environment in Gale Crater. Even though it’s not the dusty season, we continue to monitor the dust around us and in the atmosphere with a dust-devil survey and a tau. But we’re especially interested in what the clouds are up to right now, which we’re checking in on with our normal zenith and suprahorizon movies, and our cloud-season-only Phase Function Sky Survey. This is a series of movies covering the whole sky that we can use to determine how sunlight interacts with the individual water-ice crystals in the clouds.
Written by Alex Innanen, Atmospheric Scientist at York University
Share
Details
Last Updated Feb 14, 2025Related Terms
BlogsExplore More
2 min readSols 4450-4451: Making the Most of a Monday
Article 2 days ago3 min read
Sols 4447–4449: Looking Back at the Marker Band Valley
Article 3 days ago4 min read
Sols 4445–4446: Cloudy Days are Here
Article 1 week agoKeep Exploring
Discover More Topics From NASA
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
All Mars Resources
Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…
Rover Basics
Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…
Mars Exploration: Science Goals
The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Sols 4452-4453: Keeping Warm and Keeping Busy )
Also on site :
- Trump cuts tariffs on U.K. cars, steel and aluminum but keeps 10% base duty while Britain trims its taxes on 2,500 U.S. products
- ‘Shadow Force’ Review: Two Spies Get Dragged From the Cold in Middling Action Opus
- Ghosts EPs Talk Finale’s ‘Perilous’ Jay Cliffhanger, Pete and Alberta’s Big Moment — Plus, Grade It!