Category: Blogs

Written by Conor Hayes, Graduate Student at York University Earth planning date: Wednesday, June 4, 2025 We are continuing to look for a suitable location to collect a drilled sample in this area. As you may recall from Monday’s plan, we performed a short “bump” of just under 4 meters (about 13 feet) hoping to […]

Written by Henry Manelski, Ph.D. student at Purdue University This week Perseverance continued its gradual descent into the relatively flat terrain outside of Jezero Crater. In this area, the science team expects to find rocks that could be among the oldest ever observed by the Perseverance rover — and perhaps any rover to have explored […]

Written by Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Earth planning date: Monday, June 2, 2025 Now that Curiosity has spent a few sols collecting close-up measurements of the rocks in the outer edge of the boxwork-forming geologic unit, the team has decided that it’s time to collect a drill sample. The […]

Written by Sharon Wilson Purdy, Planetary Geologist at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Earth planning date: Friday, May 30, 2025 When you are scheduled to participate in Science Operations for the rover’s weekend plan, you know it’s going to be a busy morning! Assembling the activities for Friday through Sunday (Sols 4556 through […]

Written by Abigail Fraeman, Planetary Geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Earth planning date: Wednesday, May 28, 2025 We came in early this morning and learned that part of Tuesday’s plan didn’t execute on Mars due to a temporary issue with the arm. We collected APXS data on the target “Palo Verde Mountains,” but were […]

Written by Lucy Thompson, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick Earth planning date: Tuesday, May 27, 2005 We return to planning today after a successful long weekend and about 42 meters of drive distance (about 138 feet). We planned four sols of activities on Friday to keep Curiosity busy, while the U.S.-based science team […]

Written by Athanasios Klidaras, Ph.D. candidate at Purdue University, and Megan Kennedy Wu, Senior Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems To celebrate her 1,500th Martian day (“Sol”) exploring the red planet, the Perseverance rover used its robotic arm to take a selfie of the rover and the surrounding landscape. But when team members […]

Written by Conor Hayes, Graduate Student at York University Earth planning date: Friday, May 23, 2025 In Wednesday’s mission update, Alex mentioned that this past Monday’s plan included a “marathon” drive of 45 meters (148 feet). Today, we found ourselves almost 70 meters (230 feet) from where we were on Wednesday. This was our longest […]

Written by Alex Innanen, Atmospheric Scientist at York University Earth planning date: Wednesday, May 21, 2025 Monday’s single-sol plan included a marathon 45-meter drive (about 148 feet), which put us in position for two full sols of imaging. This means both sols have what we call “targeted” science blocks, in which we have images of […]

Written by Michelle Minitti, Planetary Geologist at Framework Earth planning date: Monday, May 19, 2025 Have you ever played the game Jenga, where you remove one wooden block from a stack, gently place it on another part of the stack, then repeat over and over as you try to keep the stack from toppling over? […]