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Sols 4125-4126: Woohoo! We’re ‘Go’ for Drilling At ‘Mineral King 3!’

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the "Mineral King 3" location using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), located on the turret at the end of the rover's robotic arm, on March 12, 2024, Sol 4123.

Earth planning date: Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The title of the blog gives away the big news of today - we are “go” to plan drilling at Mineral King 3. Yay!

For those not following along every day, here’s a quick recap of how we got to drill target #3 on this block: We drilled the original “Mineral King” target on sol 4107, but the drill did not reach as deep into the rock as it usually does, so we didn’t know how much powdered sample we’d collected for analysis. We learned the answer was we had enough sample for CheMin analysis, but not for SAM. We decided to try to drill again to collect more sample, so we picked a spot named “Mineral King 2” on the same block. Alas! After we attempted to preload the drill, we found out that the Mineral King 2 spot would not be a good location to try to drill. So, on Monday, we picked another location, now up to Mineral King 3, and tried the drill preload again. We found out this morning that our preload data are looking good, so we are “go” to plan for a full drill of Mineral King 3 in today’s plan!

The drilling and subsequent characterization of the drilled material are the stars of the first and second sols of today’s plan, respectively. We do have a little bit of time for remote sensing around these activities, so we’ll collect a ChemCam LIBS observation of a target named “Long Lake,” a ChemCam RMI observation, and several Mastcam mosaics to complement the Mastcam coverage we already have in the area. We’ll also be monitoring the environment with observations to look at the dust in the atmosphere, measure radiation at the surface, and look for changes in the sand on the ground below us. Finally, we will also image the workspace to look for one big, rover-made change. I really hope we’ll be greeted with the image of a fresh drill hole on Friday morning (which would come with fresh donut holes delivered to the tactical team).

Written by Abigail Fraeman, Planetary Geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory