Category: Blogs

Written by Ashley Stroupe, Mission Operations Engineer and Rover Planner at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Earth planning date: Friday, Aug. 1, 2025. Now that we have reached August, our “landiversary” (anniversary of landing — Aug. 5 PDT) is less than a week away! The team is looking forward to being able to celebrate the milestone […]

Written by Susanne P. Schwenzer, Professor of Planetary Mineralogy at The Open University, UK Earth planning date: Wednesday, July 30, 2025 The day started with a little celebration of NISAR, a new Earth observation satellite that made it successfully into orbit a few hours before our planning started. We joined in by saying “GO NISAR, […]

Written by Conor Hayes, Graduate Student at York University Earth planning date: Monday, July 28, 2025 Today was a pretty straightforward day of planning. Our drive over the weekend completed successfully, and we quickly confirmed that we are parked in a stable position. Thus, we were able to unstow the rover’s arm to poke around […]

Written by Andrew Shumway, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Washington It is not common for a rover to spot nearly perfect spheres in the soil beneath its wheels. Over two decades ago, the Opportunity rover famously discovered spherules made of hematite (nicknamed “blueberries”) near its landing site in Meridiani Planum. More recently, the Perseverance […]

Written by Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Earth planning date: Friday, July 25, 2025 A 23-meter drive (about 75 feet) brought Curiosity to today’s planned “look-about” spot. The highlight of the plan will be the 360-degree Mastcam panorama that will document the ridge-and-hollow topography of the boxwork-forming unit we’ve been […]

Written by Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick Earth planning date: Wednesday, July 23, 2025 For today’s planning, we were in the same workspace as the Monday plan — on purpose! We don’t often have a plan without a drive but in order to allow the battery to recover from some power-hungry […]

Written by Melissa Rice, Professor of Planetary Science at Western Washington University Following a short break for the July 4th holiday, Perseverance drove westward to a site called “Westport,” where the clay-bearing “Krokodillen” unit meets an olivine-bearing rock formation. It is possible that the olivine-rich rocks are an intrusive igneous unit, meaning they could have […]

Written by Deborah Padgett, MSL OPGS Task Lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory  Earth planning date: Monday, July 21, 2025 Curiosity continues our exploration of the fractured boxwork terrain on the slopes of Mount Sharp. After a successful 5-meter drive (about 16 feet), our rover is resting in a hollow on its way to a […]

Written by Lauren Edgar, Planetary Geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center Earth planning date: Friday, July 18, 2025 Curiosity has started to investigate the main exposure of the boxwork structures! What was once a distant target is now on our doorstep, and Curiosity is beginning to explore the ridges and hollows that make up this […]