Sols 4171-4172: Scoot Over! – NASA Science


On this two sol-planning day, the Curiosity science team logged in and found ourselves face to face with ‘Pinnacle Ridge’ (pictured above), part of the upper Gediz Vallis Ridge (uGVR). We saw two types of rocks in our workspace: light-toned layered rocks and darker toned rocks. Rocks that look this different are very exciting to a geologist’s eye – it means the rocks could have been formed in different environments, and could be made of different things… so how did these two types of rock end up next to each other? That’s for our clever team of scientists to work out, and we need our full suite of instruments to do that. Unfortunately, one of Curiosity’s wheels wasn’t on firm ground so we couldn’t safely unstow the arm, but these rocks are so exciting, we decided to scoot backwards about 15 cm to readjust the wheels so we can hopefully get full contact science on Wednesday.



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