Space

Sols 4325-4326: (Almost) Plunging Our Feet in the Sand

.If you review this blog incredibly often, you recognize that almost every time the wanderer stops for scientific research, MAHLI and also APXS focus on fascinating (and also easily accessible!) rocks as aim ats. The vagabond scientific research group is actually, besides, created with a lot of rock hounds. But geography is not all stones, all the time-- sand is past stone that if buried as well as forced long enough will definitely become rock once again. Today was opportunity for sand to shine, as the work area was cut through troughs of sand of different shades as well as brightnesses, and it had actually been almost five hundred sols since our team acquired our final specialized sand dimension along with APXS and also MAHLI. The "Pumice Apartment" intended was one of the more beautiful sand patches while "Kidney Pond" was just one of the darker sand spots. APXS utilizes a special positioning mode over sand aim ats so the equipment obtains close, yet not too close, to the loosened component which could foul up the instrument. Not-rock was actually also the purview of our ecological reviews. Navcam is actually arranged for imaging looking for clouds and dust devils, and changes in the sand as well as dust on top of the wanderer deck. Both Navcam and Mastcam are going to produce observations to determine the amount of dirt in the environment. Rapid eye movements are going to track our weather along with normal sizes, RAD is going to observe our radiation environment, and also DAN is going to peruse stone for signs of water under our drive road.