...... Looks like a tear.

The Sol 1134 mini-start hole on “Pilgrim” went well, as seen in the above MAHLI image. Side note: if that doesn’t look like a hole to you, try rotating the image (the hole is illuminated from the lower left, but the human eye generally prefers to see sunlight coming from the upper half of the image).

Due to power restrictions, we’re waiting until the weekend plan to go for the full drill hole, but that means that today there’s time for a SAM atmospheric observation and a targeted science block. The goal of the SAM activity is to look for methane, one Mars year after the previous high detections. So we’ll let SAM take a big whiff to see if we can detect anything. I was on duty as GSTL today, and we filled the science block with several ChemCam and Mastcam observations. We’re trying to look for variations in silica associated with the fracture zone that we’re drilling. We also planned several Mastcam images to look for changes in fine-grained deposits to evaluate local winds. Despite our power restrictions, planning has been going very smoothly today, and we’re looking forward to more time for science this weekend!

Unfortunately the Sol 1135 bundles were not uplinked due to a DSN issue, so the activities that we planned yesterday never made it onboard. However, that meant that Curiosity spent the day resting and recharging in time for a lot of great science this weekend.
Today’s 3-sol plan will recover most of the activities that were planned for Sol 1135, in addition to the main activity of a full drill hole on the “Greenhorn” target. On the first sol, Curiosity will acquire several ChemCam and Mastcam observations on the targets “Nisku,” “Skull Creek,” “Hawk Creek,” and “Opeche,” to investigate the variability in silica associated with these fracture zones. We’ll also take several Mastcam images to look for changes in fine-grained deposits to evaluate local winds. Overnight, we’ll use MAHLI to image the CheMin inlet in preparation for drilling activities. On the second sol, we’ll go for the full drill hole on “Greenhorn,” followed by MAHLI imaging of the drill hole. The third sol consists of several environmental monitoring activities to assess the composition and opacity of the atmosphere. We’ll also squeeze in some Mastcam observations of the “Big Sky” dump pile and drill tailings using all of the camera filters. The only activity that we won’t have time for is the SAM atmospheric methane detection, but we’re hoping to get that sometime next week. I’ll be on duty again on Monday, so I’m looking forward to seeing the results from the latest drill hole!

Over the weekend Curiosity drilled another hole on Mars at the “Greenhorn” target. Everything went smoothly and we have another beautiful sample to analyze! Today’s plan is focused on transferring the sample to CheMin, followed by CheMin analysis of the drill sample. I was on duty as GSTL today, and we also planned several ChemCam and Mastcam observations of the drill hole and surrounding rocks. First we’ll acquire a ChemCam passive observation of the drill tailings, and take a number of RMI images of the drill hole to help with ChemCam targeting of the drill hole tomorrow. Then we’ll acquire ChemCam LIBS on the targets “Gypsy,” “Tumbleweed,” and “Wrangle” to assess the variability of silica associated with these fracture zones. We’ll also take a small Mastcam mosaic to document the ChemCam targets and the local topography, and a Mastcam and Navcam photometry experiment to characterize differences in lighting over the same region at different times of day. In the afternoon, the “Greenhorn” drill sample will be transferred, sieved, and dropped off to CheMin, and the sample will be analyzed by CheMin overnight. It will be interesting to see how this sample compares to the “Big Sky” target!

The ChemCam RMI images of the drill hole planned yesterday were successfully acquired and received, and were used today to plan 2 parallel LIBS rasters down the hole. The additional LIBS raster should be useful in measuring variations in chemistry among individual sand grains and in detecting thin veins. ChemCam and Mastcam will also observe a target dubbed "Marshall" to see whether silica enrichment extends along other fractures near the rover. Finally the SAM methane experiment that was deferred due to an uplink problem last week is scheduled overnight between Sols 1140 and 1141. This experiment requires a significant amount of power, which will limit the activities that can be planned tomorrow.

There was a problem processing the latest data from MSL at the Deep Space Network station that received it, but the data are now available and confirm that the Sol 1140 activities completed successfully. As expected, the batteries need to be recharged after the SAM methane experiment, so Sol 1141 activities are limited to a few remote sensing activities. ChemCam and Mastcam will observe the Greenhorn drill tailings and another bedrock target, called "Fort Conrad." Besides some recurring observations, that's it for the Sol 1141 plan! The rover's batteries should be nearly fully charged for Sol 1142 activities.

The weekend drive was successful, placing us nicely on an overlook of the “Meeteetse” area. The focus for Sol 1146 is to get some good color stereo images of the whole area, including “Big Sky,” “Greenhorn,” and “Meeteetse”. Mastcam will take a 16x3 mosaic of the Meeteetse area, plus a 12x1 right-eye mosaic of some nearby resistant ridges. It will also measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere by looking at the sun, and take a documentation image of the target “Belle Fourche” after ChemCam analyzes it. ChemCam also has a “passive sky” observation, where we use the ChemCam spectrometers to stare at the sky and measure the abundance of gases in the atmosphere.
On Sol 1147, the main activity is to deliver some of the material sampled at the “Greenhorn” drill hole to the SAM instrument, and then run a SAM evolved gas analysis and tunable laser spectrometer (EGA/TLS) experiment on the sample. This involves heating the sample gradually and measuring the gases that are produced as it breaks down.

The Mastcam L panoramic view on Sol 1144.

Does anyone know a recent sol when Curiosity has fully imaged its deck ?

Andrew Bodrov already succeeded in using that technic.

I'd like to fill the black gap in my last panorama where there are no photo of the rover. Does anyone know a recent sol when Curiosity has fully imaged its deck ?

This has never been done with Mastcam.

I suppose in theory the gap could be filled with MAHLI self-portrait data, though that would be geometrically challenging.

I have the impression that occasionally Navcam is used to image the whole deck, but I don't have any tools that can conveniently figure out when this was done. I know it happened shortly after landing (see http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/mult...a/pia16063.html ) We have occasionally tried to get a hybrid Mastcam/Navcam pan into the plan, but without science justification this is a tough sell.

Everyone on the mission who I have talked to about this except for the Mastcam PI agrees that it would be nice to have a Mastcam deck pan...

Going through the rover images, I found a section of the rover was imaged by Mastcam Z [sic] (accidentally? on purpose?) on sol 25 as part of a 360 1-tier panorama.

I've tried to imagine a way in which the entire rover could be imaged by "accident" but I haven't come up with a plausible story. Yet.