Category: Blogs

Written by Sharon Wilson Purdy, Planetary Geologist at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Earth planning date: Monday, July 14, 2025 The Curiosity rover continues to navigate through the region of Mount Sharp characterized by the boxwork terrain.  After successfully completing a drive of about 34 meters over the weekend (about 112 feet), the […]

Written by Michelle Minitti, MAHLI Deputy Principal Investigator, Framework Earth planning date: Friday, July 11, 2025 Imagine this vista as the view out your office window to start your workday. Your natural tendency would be to grab your camera and photograph as much of the view as possible. Curiosity was lucky enough to find herself […]

Written by Ashley Stroupe, Mission Operations Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Earth planning date: Wednesday, July 9, 2025 In today’s plan, we have a little bit of everything. With it being winter still, we are taking advantage of the ability to let the rover sleep in, doing most of the activities in the afternoon […]

Written by Susanne P. Schwenzer, Professor of Planetary Mineralogy at The Open University, UK Earth planning date: Monday, July 7, 2025 A few planning sols ago, we spotted a small ridge in the landscape ahead of us. Ridges and structures that are prominently raised above the landscape are our main target along this part of […]

Written by Eleanor Moreland, Ph.D. Student Collaborator at Rice University For the past month and a half, Perseverance has been exploring the Krokodillen plateau in search of clay-bearing rocks. An earlier blog discussed that these rocks could hold clues to Mars’ watery past, and Perseverance has been exploring multiple potential locations to find a suitable […]

Written by Abigail Fraeman, Deputy Project Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Earth planning date: Thursday, July 3, 2025 The team was delighted this morning to learn that Wednesday’s drive had completed flawlessly, placing us in a stable position facing a ~3 foot high ridge located ~35 feet away.  This ridge is the eastern edge […]

Written by Lucy Thompson, APXS Collaborator and Senior Research Scientist at the University of New Brunswick, CanadaEarth planning date: Wednesday, July 2, 2025As we traverse the boxwork terrain, we are encountering a series of more resistant ridges/bedrock patches, and areas that are more rubbly and tend to form lower relief polygonal or trough-like features. We […]

Written by Scott VanBommel, Planetary Scientist at Washington University in St. Louis Earth planning date: Monday, June 30, 2025 Our weekend drive placed Curiosity exactly where we had hoped: on lighter-toned, resistant bedrock we have been eyeing for close study. Curiosity’s workspace tosol did not contain any targets suitable for DRT. After a detailed discussion […]

A behind-the-scenes look at the annual Mars 2020 Science Team Meeting Written by Katie Stack Morgan, Mars 2020 Acting Project Scientist  The Mars 2020 Science Team gathered for a week in June to discuss recent science results, synthesize earlier mission observations, and discuss future plans for continued exploration of Jezero’s crater rim. It was also […]

Written by Abigail Fraeman, Deputy Project Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Earth planning date: Friday, June 27, 2025 We weren’t able to unstow Curiosity’s robotic arm on Wednesday because of some potentially unstable rocks under Curiosity’s wheels, but we liked the rocks at Wednesday’s location enough that we decided to spend a sol repositioning […]