Astrogeology Science Center

Marc Hunter of the Astrogeology Science Center has been recognized for a photo of a Valles Marineras Tharsis color topographic map chosen to be included in the Plenary Session at the upcoming July 2020 Esri Federal GIS Conference.

A few months ago, Curiosity drove up on top of the Greenheugh pediment (see this blog post: https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission-updates/8624/sols-2696-2698-made-it/) to investigate the capping unit that is visible on top. After Curiosity drove off the pediment, the rover...

Curiosity is making good progress on the way to “Bloodstone Hill,” an interesting bright outcrop visible on the left side of the above Navcam image.  The plan is to drive around the large sand patch and then make our way up to the hill, hopefully sometime next weekend.  But before we get to “Bloodstone Hill,” there’s a lot of great science to be done this weekend! 

Millions of people are listening to a song called “Shoemaker” by a Finnish music group called 'Nightwish', written as a tribute to Dr. Eugene Shoemaker (April 28, 1928 – July 18, 1997) , founder of Astrogeology Science Center.

Today’s plan marks the start of our more than 1.5 km traverse to the next major unit of Mt. Sharp, the “sulfate-bearing” unit. During this traverse the focus will be on driving as far as we can each sol, but we’ll still be doing plenty of science along the way.

As the Curiosity rover explores the Martian climate and geology of  Mars,  scientists are hoping to find definitive evidence that life once existed there by studying its environment.  When new data are acquired and studied, scientists make known their findings to other scientists, as well as to the public and in different venues.

There was a hiccup with SAM in Monday’s plan preventing it from running the “preconditioning” steps to get ready for sample analysis, but after studying the issue the SAM team says that everything looks ok.

In March 2015, researchers were excited as they waited for details about the dwarf planet Ceres from NASA’s Dawn mission. Further knowledge of the structure, surface, and history of Ceres were long-awaited and in acquisition. Dawn's revelation of the composition of Ceres’ 40-km-thick crust is debated among researchers despite the wealth of data collected. 

Astrogeology Field Notes for March.  “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” -Winston Churchill

The plan for Sol 2740 and 2741 is focused on diagnosing the issue with MAHLI, but while we are sitting in one place, we will also collect plenty of remote sensing data of the area around the rover.

The USGS Astrogeology Science Center (ASC), in collaboration with NASA and the Lunar and Planetary Institute, has released a new definitive geologic map of the Moon!