Written by Lauren Edgar, planetary geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center
Earth planning date: Monday June 16, 2025
During the weekend, curiosity successfully completed activities on the “Altadena” drilling site and returned to the road. The route of approximately 48 meters (around 157 feet) succeeded and placed the rover in the following cartography quadrilateral (informally called quad).
As a reminder, the Rover exploration area was divided into square quads of 1.5 km, and each quad is appointed according to a city of less than 100,000 people. As Curiosity explores the characteristics in a quad, we attribute informal target names which correspond to the geological formations and the characteristics of this city on earth.
Uyuni, in Bolivia, is the Gateway City near the largest salt apartments (wages) in the world, and this seems to be an appropriate name because curiosity explores the drier deposit environments higher in the stratigraphy of Mount Sharp. The team is delighted to use new target names that will rely on Uyuni and its surroundings, including the Atacama desert in Chile, which houses many analog sites in March, including wind characteristics, life studies in extreme environments, and some of the major observatories in the world. An appropriate theme for this next exploration phase!
As for today’s two -soil plan, we have a good balance between contact science, remote sensing and another long journey. The team planned Apxs and Mahli on a nodular target of the foundation called “Flamingo” to assess its chemistry and texture. In the targeted remote sensing block, the scientific team has planned a mosaic Mastcam of “Los Patos” to characterize a depression which can be linked to a crater with a small impact or to box structures, as well as a mastcam image of “La Lava” to investigate an interesting dark block. There are also several mosaics of Mastcam from the hollows nearby to assess active surface processes and documentation images for chemicam observations. The plan includes an observation of chimicam libs on a target called “tacos” to assess the local foundation, and a long distance RMI mosaic to assess the sedimentary structures of “Mishe Mokwa”. Then, the rover will lead about 56 meters (around 184 feet) to the southwest and will take up the imagery after driving to prepare for the next plan. On the second ground, curiosity will end a target CHEMCAM calibration activity, a mastcam data management activity and some Navcam activities to monitor clouds and dust in the atmosphere.
We are impatient to explore more Uyuni while we are heading to the largest exhibition of boxwork structures that await us and the clues they hold on the ancient conditions of March.
