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Sols 4316-4317: Hunting for Sulfur This image was taken by the Left Navigation Camera (NavCam) aboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, and captures the bright stones of the “Sheep Creek” target — just above the rover wheel – which strongly resemble elemental sulfur blocks identified earlier in the traverse. This image was taken on sol 4314, Martian day 4,314 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission, on Sept. 24, 2024, at 20:24:50 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Earth planning date: Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024 

Navigating the rugged, unforgiving Martian terrain is always a challenge, and our recent attempt to reach the “Sheep Creek” target highlights this. We had aimed for small, distant bright rocks, but from 50 meters away (about 164 feet), the limited resolution of our images made it difficult to fine-tune navigation. After an ambitious drive, the rover came agonizingly close — stopping just short of these small bright rocks. The rocks, with their distinctive rounded and pitted “weathering” pattern (pictured), strongly resemble elemental sulfur blocks that we’ve encountered before. Frustratingly, although the target rocks were right under the front wheel and clearly visible in our navigation cameras, they remained just out of reach of the rover’s arm.

While the rover’s arm couldn’t quite reach the bright stones of Sheep Creek, we didn’t let that stop us and planned to use other onboard instruments to help us analyze the composition, textures, and context before we move to our next position. As the Keeper of the Plan for the Geology and Mineralogy theme group, my role was to ensure all those activities were recorded in the plan.

To find out the composition of the stones of Sheep Creek, we used ChemCam (our onboard laser) to observe two promising stones we’ve named “Arch Rock” and “Ash Mountain.” We’re hoping to see if they have any evidence of elemental sulfur as their appearance suggests. For a closer look at the texture, we will take high-resolution, color images with Mastcam (which you can also view in 3D with red and blue anaglyph glasses!). We also want to look at an interesting transition between light-colored and dark-colored bedrock nearby, which we will cover with more high-resolution, colored images. This transition could give us clues about where the unusual white rocks of Sheep Creek came from and how they formed.

We had our eye on another bright rock in the area, named “Beryl Lake.” It had an interesting bright-toned crusty appearance and as we could reach it with the rover arm, we used our APXS tool (think of it as a chemical scanner) to see its composition and if it had any traces of sulfur. We took a closer look with our rover hand lens (MAHLI) at a rock called “Aster Lake,” which had intriguing white patches that might be similar to the stones of Sheep Creek. Ultimately, our science goal this plan was to collect data on whether these bright-toned stones had evidence of elemental sulfur and increase our understanding on how they formed.

Next, we’ll carefully reposition the rover to move closer to these interesting targets — a maneuver that we call a “bump” — so that next plan, set to occur over the weekend, we’ll be able to get up close and personal with the white stones of Sheep Creek. While the rover waits for the weekend plan, we’re setting up the rover to do some “untargeted” science after the drive. This includes using an automated tool called AEGIS that finds interesting targets on its own and zaps them with the ChemCam laser. Plus, it’s a good time to record some observations of the modern Martian environment, so we’ll make the most of the time to measure dust levels, take movies that will hopefully capture some dust devils, and look at clouds — if any — in the Martian sky.

We’re looking forward to the weekend plan to hopefully get another chance to do some contact science on targets that may be rich in sulfur!

Written by Amelie Roberts, Ph.D. Candidate at Imperial College London

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Last Updated

Sep 27, 2024

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ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice), is on an epic eight-year journey to Jupiter. This first episode of ‘The journey of Juice’ tells the story of Juice’s first months in space, from its launch on 14 April 2023 to its lunar-Earth gravity assist (LEGA for short) in August 2024. This flyby was not only the first double gravity assist manoeuvre of its kind, it was also a perfect opportunity to test out the spacecraft’s cameras and science instruments.  

In this episode, Juice’s Mission Manager Nicolas Altobelli explains how the spacecraft will become the first ever human-made machine to orbit a moon of another planet, in this case Jupiter’s largest moon Ganymede. 

You’ll also hear from Claire Vallat and Marc Costa at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) near Madrid, Spain. Juice will perform incredibly complex measurements once it reaches Jupiter, and the Science Operations team at ESAC is making sure we get the most out of every instrument. 

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Hubble Captures Stellar Nurseries in a Majestic Spiral This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy IC 1954. ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the spiral galaxy IC 1954, located 45 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Horologium. It sports a glowing bar in its core, majestically winding spiral arms, and clouds of dark dust across it. Numerous glowing, pink spots across the disc of the galaxy are H-alpha regions that offer astronomers a view of star-forming nebulae, which are prominent emitters of red, H-alpha light. Some astronomers theorize that the galaxy’s ‘bar’ is actually an energetic star-forming region that just happens to lie over the galactic center.

The data featured in this image come from a program that extends the cooperation among multiple observatories: Hubble, the infrared James Webb Space Telescope, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, a ground-based radio telescope. By surveying IC 1954 and over 50 other nearby galaxies in radio, infrared, optical, and ultraviolet light, astronomers aim to fully trace and reconstruct the path matter takes through stars, mapping the interstellar gas and dust in each galaxy. Hubble’s observing capabilities form an important part of this survey: it can capture younger stars and star clusters when they are brightest at ultraviolet and optical wavelengths, and its H-alpha filter effectively tracks emission from nebulae. The resulting dataset will form a treasure trove of research on the evolution of stars in galaxies, which Webb can build upon as it continues its science operations into the future.

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Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

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Last Updated

Sep 27, 2024

Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

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