Category: Blogs

Written by Sharon Wilson Purdy, Planetary Geologist at Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Earth planning date: Wednesday, April 2, 2025 Wow, sol 4500. What an impressive number of sols (Martian days) exploring the Red Planet! This delightfully even sol number made me wonder where the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity was at this point […]

Written by Conor Hayes, Graduate Student at York University Earth planning date: Monday, March 31, 2025 Planning today began with two pieces of great news. First, our 50-meter drive (about 164 feet) from the weekend plan completed successfully, bringing us oh-so-close to finally driving out of the small canyon that we’ve been traversing through and […]

Written by Natalie Moore, Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems Earth planning date: Friday, March 28, 2025 Womp, womp. Another SRAP (Slip Risk Assessment Process) issue due to wheels being perched on these massive layered sulfate rocks. With our winter power constraints as tight as they are, though, keeping the arm stowed freed […]

Written by Roger Wiens, Principal Investigator, SuperCam instrument / Co-Investigator, SHERLOC instrument at Purdue University Recently Mars has had a few Earthly visitors. On March 1, NASA’s Europa Clipper flew within 550 miles (884 kilometers) of the Red Planet’s surface on its way out to Jupiter. On March 12, the European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft […]

Written by Alex Innanen, atmospheric scientist at York University Earth planning date: Wednesday, March 26, 2025 It’s my second shift of the week as the Environmental theme lead and keeper of the plan (a bit of a mouthful we shorten to ESTLK) and today started out feeling eerily similar to Monday. Once again, Curiosity is […]

Written by Lauren Edgar, Planetary Geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center Earth planning date: Monday, March 24, 2025 If you’ve ever seen a geologist in the field, you may have seen a classic stance: one leg propped up on a rock, knee bent, head down looking at the rocks at their feet, and arm pointing […]

Written by Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Earth planning date: Friday, March 21, 2025 It’s the start of spring here in the Northern Hemisphere on Earth, but in Gale Crater on Mars our rover is still heading into the depths of Martian winter. We’re just a few weeks away from […]

Written by Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick Earth planning date: Wednesday, March 19, 2025  This terrain is a tricky drive, with rocks angled chaotically all around. One of our geologists remarked that they wouldn’t like to even walk over this without solid boots coming way up over the ankles — this […]

Written by Alex Jones, Ph.D. candidate at Imperial College London Last week the Perseverance Science Team were astonished by a strange rock comprised of hundreds of millimeter-sized spheres… and the team are now working hard to understand their origin.  It has now been two weeks since Perseverance arrived at Broom Point, situated at the lower […]

Written by Conor Hayes, Graduate Student at York University Earth planning date: Monday, March 17, 2025 Last week I was in Houston, Texas, at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The mid-March weather in Houston is often more like mid-summer weather here in Toronto, so it has been a bit of a shock coming home […]