Traversing the Clay-Bearing Unit Along the Base of VRR, Site 73-79, sol 2297-2695, 22 Jan 2019-3 Mar 2020 Options

[PaulH51]

Looking good at Kilmarie!
The amount and shape of the drill cuttings (tailings) could bode well for a sample in the sleeve, fingers crossed they can get this one inside SAM
Nice to see two sample holes in one NavCam frame
Kilmarie is on the right side

[PaulH51]

Simple 'blink GIF' of the R-MastCam frames of 'Kilmarie' on sols 2381 and 2384, roughly aligned by adding margins.
Note the movement of sand and pebbles and the colour differences in the cuttings (tailings)
Those cuttings height appears to be a little smaller than I estimated from the NavCam frames, hope that it's deep enough to have got enough powdered rock into the drill sleeve for analysis.

[atomoid]

thanks, its impressive seeing how much a mess the drilling operations create displacing rocks and sand seemingly far from the intrusion site (check the pebbles in the distance!). it inspired me to create a somewhat sloppy animated gif crossseye/anaglyph using the stereo m100/m34 sets from those SOLs, unfortunately much gets unavoidably cropped out using the Steophotomaker functions

[PaulH51]

Looking northeast at an upper section of the Vera Rubin Ridge
Sol 2389 R-MastCam, 3-frame mosaic, that I processed, including a patched sky, assembled in MS ICE after coarse de-bayering with GIMP
These frames are part of a set that should make a much larger mosaic, but I'll leave that to those who can properly process these compressed bayer images.
We don't appear to have a mission update for this sol, so not sure if this particular section of ridge was named.

[jvandriel]

The Mastcam R view on Sol 2389.
97 Images Debayered and stitched.

Jan van Driel

[PaulH51]

A long distance RMI mosaic of the Sulfate unit.
10 frames from Sol 2396 roughly assembled in MS ICE.

[alan]

The Mastcam R view on Sol 2389.
97 Images Debayered and stitched.

Jan van Driel

Reminds me of the ripple field Spirit visited in the lee of Husband Hill.

[jvandriel]

The MASTcam R view on Sol 2390.

Jan van Driel

[PaulH51]

Sol 2397 L-MastCam of an inspection of one of the open inlet ports for SAM. The internal screen appears to be clean, but since the change to Feed Extended Sample Transfer (FEST) and delivering powdered rock directly from the drill sleeve into SAM and CheMin there is no direct screening prior to it being dispensed from the drill sleeve.

I was able to find the screen size (1 mm) for the CheMin inlet port, but I can't find the screen size for SAM, it appears coarser than the screen in CheMin (I guesstimate it to be closer to 2 mm).

Does anyone know of a document that has the actual mesh size or the internal diameter of the inlet funnel TIA

[jvandriel]

Sol 2390 MASTcam L.

Sunset Animation on Mars.

[serpens]

A fine and a coarse grid covering the two solid inlets would make sense Paul given that the CHIMRA was designed to produce two samples sieved to less than 1 mm and less than 150 micron for input to the solid inlets. A 1 mm grid for the 150 micron sample and a (2mm) grid for the 1 mm sample would ensure that the samples would pass through the grids.
There is damage evident to the left hand side of the grid in your image. Could this be a function of the tapping delivery workaround for delivering drill samples from the drill tube?

[PaulH51]

A fine and a coarse grid covering the two solid inlets would make sense Paul given that the CHIMRA was designed to produce two samples sieved to less than 1 mm and less than 150 micron for input to the solid inlets. A 1 mm grid for the 150 micron sample and a (2mm) grid for the 1 mm sample would ensure that the samples would pass through the grids.
There is damage evident to the left hand side of the grid in your image. Could this be a function of the tapping delivery workaround for delivering drill samples from the drill tube?

Thanks
I'm unsure if the minor damage to the mesh is a result of FEST, as far as I can establish, this is the first time that SAM inlet port #1 was imaged in the open position with a MastCam since landing, there are NavCam images acquired during checkout of both SAM ports open in the weeks after landing, but even brightening those images is not conclusive to seeing if that small dent in the mesh was present at that time. SAM inlet port #2 has no obvious mesh (screen) looking the available MastCam images in the open position.

[charborob]

Sol 2400 RMI long distance view:

[charborob]

A strange hole in this sol 2399 Rmastcam image (see arrow). Sand displacement due to a laser blast?

[atomoid]

Thanks by the way for nicely debayering that. Yes it would seem so, looks as if the strafe pattern ended in a clean socket as if a hole, but thats probably shadow tricks.
Here are the sol2399 ChemCam views of it before and after.
it looks like they took a shot at it earlier on sol2394 as well, here are those before and after chemcam views.