Curiosity Blog: Sol 3998-4000: Four Thousand Sols of Exploration – NASA Mars Exploration

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Thinking of Curiosity parked on Sol 4000, calmly watching the clouds roil in Gale Crater, I can’t help but smile as I recall its impressive record of exploration.Happy 4000th Solar Day!

Earth Project Date: Friday, November 3, 2023.

Today we reached an exciting milestone on Mars as we plan to spend 4,000th Martian day of exploration with the Curiosity rover (nearly 11 years and three months)! In addition to this milestone, Curiosity has had a very busy and productive week on Mars as we wrapped up drilling activities at Sequoia and prepared for next week’s solar conjunction. During solar conjunction, Mars will be on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth, which means that after Monday we will not be able to communicate with the rover for the next few weeks.

Today I was on duty as LTP and at first I thought our 3 Sol schedule might be relatively light as we start to limit the use of different instruments to ensure everything is in safe condition for the rendezvous. However, we have a lot of power for science activities in this schedule, so the team has planned a busy weekend of observing, including nearly 6 hours of remote sensing!

On the first solar day Curiosity will conduct ChemCam LIBS observations of a target named “Ionian Basin” and ChemCam passive observations of “Mount Irredeemable” to investigate the chemical diversity of rocks near the borehole. The MastCam will also capture large mosaics to provide more context and document the stratification and diagenetic features of the area. The program also includes multiple MastCam change detection campaigns to monitor fine-grained movement in the sand near and around the borehole. The ENV Thematic Group has planned multiple Navcam campaigns to search for dust devils and monitor dust in the atmosphere.

On the second solar day Curiosity will conduct another ChemCam LIBS observation at a target named “Sphinx Crest” to evaluate the chemistry of a dark-colored block in light-colored bedrock. Two long-range ChemCam RMI mosaics are planned to evaluate dark-resistant rock formations in the Cook South Buttes and look back toward Peace Vallis to evaluate distant strata and landforms.

The Third Sun These included Navcam cloud height observations, Navcam zenith movies (for monitoring clouds) and Mastcam tau (for assessing atmospheric opacity). There were also many twilight cloud observations throughout the programme.

Thinking of Curiosity parked on Sol 4000, calmly watching the clouds roil in Gale Crater, I can’t help but smile as I recall its impressive record of exploration.

This image was taken by the left navigation camera on NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Martian day 3990 (2023-10-27 20:27:30 UTC). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The Navcam image above looks back across the northern rim of the crater, across the Aeolis Palus Plain that we traversed so many years ago. From our vantage point on Mount Sharp, we have much to look back on, and many exciting discoveries await us.