Crossing the Dunes at Murray Buttes, Sites 54-62, Sols 1353-1659, May 28 2016-Apr 6 2017 Options

[HSchirmer]

Static cling (as it were). It does not seem to "rain" dust.

But what if dust "rains up"

Dust charging and transport on airless planetary bodies
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL069491/full

Ok, Mars isn't airless, just close.
If air pressure is low enough, (how low?)
static makes "dust" act as a fluid, thus "dust ponds" on 67P, atlas.

[mcaplinger]

Static cling (as it were). It does not seem to "rain" dust.

Sure it does. It rains dust all the time. Where do you think the dust on MER's solar panels comes from?

One has to distinguish between dust, fines, sand, and other names for particulates on the basis of grain size. The stuff on the MSL deck mostly looks like sand or maybe soil to me.

There's a lot of stuff on aeolian transport of materials on Mars in the literature going back to Viking or even before.

[PaulH51]

Bit of a drought for new MSL images. Nothing for 1654, 55 & 56... Anyone know if MRO / ODY & DSN are healthy?

[Phil Stooke]

Healthy enough for us to be getting images from Opportunity.

Phil

[mcaplinger]

Bit of a drought for new MSL images.

There's this thing called the weekend. If the Friday command sequence doesn't get uplinked for some reason, then the rover is in "run out" over the weekend and may not send anything, depending on the state of the downlink queues. That's the typical cause of a 2-3 day outage. You can stop worrying now.

[Sean]

Ok that makes sense... I can stop thinking Curi is pitched over in a ditch then.

[djellison]

If you look super close at the raw image page - you'll find some old sols got new data added. That would also be indicative of run-out activities - just down-linking what's in flash, without acquiring anything new.

[algorithm]

"There's this thing called the weekend"

Love it!

[alan]

I just ran across this:

An animation tracking Curiosity’s path on Mars, along Bridger Basin while looking at the Bob Marshall Ridge.
Composed in Blender from 41 Navcam greyscale/xyz image pairs taken by the rover at sols 1094 to 1108.

https://vimeo.com/160405895

[centsworth_II]

Here's Phil's MSL route map covering that time period.

[PaulH51]

Good call on the Runout...
Curiosity Mission Update by Ryan Anderson: Sols 1657-1658: April Fool's Day, or Groundhog's Day?

Over the weekend there was a problem with the Deep Space Network that we rely on to transmit commands to Curiosity, so the rover didn’t receive its instructions and instead went into “runout” mode, where it patiently waits for commands and does some basic environmental monitoring in the meantime. That means today’s plan was a “do-over” trying to cram everything from our weekend plan into two sols.
The Sol 1657 plan starts with a busy remote sensing science block. Navcam will take a couple of images of the workspace, then Mastcam will do a large multispectral mosaic of Vera Rubin Ridge and its interesting iron oxides. This is then followed by a multispectral observation of the target “Fivemile Brook” and an image to monitor the rover deck. Mastcam also has the first of several change monitoring observations in the science block. These observations are repeated throughout the day to see if any sand moves. Once Mastcam is done, ChemCam has a couple of passive calibration activities, followed by a long-distance RMI observation of Mt. Sharp that I requested.
Later in the Sol 1657 plan, MAHLI has a couple of documentation images of the scoop location at Ogunquit, and MARDI has a twilight observation of the ground under our wheels. SAM also has an engineering activity.
On Sol 1658, the plan starts off with some morning atmospheric observations using Navcam and Mastcam, as well as the start of another set of Mastcam change detection images. The main targeted science block on Sol 1658 has ChemCam observations of the targets “Kamankeag” and “Hamlik Peak” with accompanying Mastcam images. Navcam also has a dust devil movie and a cloud movie in this science block.
A little bit later in the afternoon, Mastcam will repeat its change detection image and do another couple of observations to measure the dust in the atmosphere. The change detection images will continue on into the evening, and MARDI will also take another image to see what has changed beneath the rover.

[Art Martin]

From Sol 1657

Mars Panorama at My Flickr Page

and a simulated 3D panorama of the same scene. I downloaded the latest Panorama Maker software from ArcSoft and it has this capability. Seems to do a decent job.

Simulated 3d Pan

[PaulH51]

Curiosity Mission Update Sols 1659-1660: Time to Hit the Road Again

Curiosity has been carrying out a great investigation at Ogunquit Beach, but we’re still working out some issues related to the drill feed, so the decision was made to drive away in today’s plan. We’re driving away with a cache full of sand, so we can still deliver to CheMin and SAM in a future plan.
I was the Geology Science Theme Lead today, and our plan was focused on picking up a few last observations at Ogunquit Beach before driving away. The plan starts with APXS on undisturbed sand at the target “Pamola,” with corresponding MAHLI documentation images. This observation will be helpful to compare to APXS results from the disturbed sand in the wheel scuff. Later in the afternoon, there’s another arm backbone to run some drill diagnostics. Then we’ll acquire several high-priority Mastcam change detection observations, to monitor the movement of sand in a few places, one of which corresponds to a previous Navcam dust devil survey. We’ll also take two stereo mosaics to evaluate ripple wavelength and height. Before we fully drive away, we’ll position the back of the rover over Ogunquit Beach so DAN can take a measurement. Then Curiosity will continue driving to the south. After the drive we’ll take post-drive imaging for targeting, and prepare for the possibility of contact science in the weekend plan. The second sol includes an autonomously selected ChemCam target, and a ChemCam calibration activity. We’ll also take several Mastcam and Navcam images to search for dust devils and monitor the amount of dust in the atmosphere. Even though we’re leaving the dune behind, there’s some interesting outcrop up ahead so I’m excited to see what the more resistant outcrop might hold!

[PaulH51]

Midnight Planets: Curiosity moved approximately 26.7m WSW (-110º) on Sol 1659

[PaulH51]

1659 : L-NavCam partial pan that may help to refine the location until the rest come down