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Sols 4493-4494: Just Looking Around
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Sols 4493-4494: Just Looking Around NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on March 25, 2025 — sol 4491, or Martian day 4,491 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 17:16:50 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech
Written by Alex Innanen, atmospheric scientist at York University
Earth planning date: Wednesday, March 26, 2025
It’s my second shift of the week as the Environmental theme lead and keeper of the plan (a bit of a mouthful we shorten to ESTLK) and today started out feeling eerily similar to Monday. Once again, Curiosity is posing like a geologist, which means that once again we can’t unstow the arm and will be skipping contact science. The silver lining is that this means we have extra time to have a good look around.
The plan also looks similar to Monday’s — targeted remote sensing on the first sol before driving away, and then untargeted remote sensing on the next. On sol 4493 we start our remote sensing, almost as remote as we can get, with a suprahorizon movie looking for clouds in the south. A dust-devil survey rounds out the sol’s environmental observations, and then the geology theme group can get down to the serious business of looking at rocks. For Mastcam this means observing a group of bedrock targets all called “Observatory Trail” (one of which you can see in the middle of the image above), pointing out some interesting veins in “Point Loma,” and casting their gaze out toward “Black Butte” (which I could not think of a fun pun for…). ChemCam has a LIBS observation of “Cholla,” as well as two long-distance observations of the Texoli Butte and the boxwork structures. Our second sol is a little more restrained, as untargeted sols tend to be. But Curiosity will still have plenty of energy after a good rest. We’re taking advantage of that with an extra-long dust-devil movie. Even though we’re in our cloudy season, we still sometimes see dust lifting, and having that extra time to look out for it increases our chances of catching a wind gust or a dust devil in action. Alongside that we also have a Mastcam tau observation to keep an eye on the amount of dust in the atmosphere, and wrap up with a ChemCam AEGIS activity to autonomously choose a LIBS target.
Share Details Last Updated Mar 28, 2025 Related Terms Explore More 2 min read Sols 4491-4492: Classic Field Geology PoseArticle
2 days ago
3 min read Sols 4488-4490: Progress Through the Ankle-Breaking Terrain (West of Texoli Butte, Climbing Southward)
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4 days ago
3 min read Sols 4486-4487: Ankle-Breaking Kind of Terrain!
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7 days ago
Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
All Mars Resources
Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…
Rover Basics
Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…
Mars Exploration: Science Goals
The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…
Sols 4493-4494: Just Looking Around
- Curiosity Home
- Science
- News and Features
- Multimedia
- Mars Missions
- Mars Home
2 min read
Sols 4493-4494: Just Looking Around NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on March 25, 2025 — sol 4491, or Martian day 4,491 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 17:16:50 UTC. NASA/JPL-CaltechWritten by Alex Innanen, atmospheric scientist at York University
Earth planning date: Wednesday, March 26, 2025
It’s my second shift of the week as the Environmental theme lead and keeper of the plan (a bit of a mouthful we shorten to ESTLK) and today started out feeling eerily similar to Monday. Once again, Curiosity is posing like a geologist, which means that once again we can’t unstow the arm and will be skipping contact science. The silver lining is that this means we have extra time to have a good look around.
The plan also looks similar to Monday’s — targeted remote sensing on the first sol before driving away, and then untargeted remote sensing on the next. On sol 4493 we start our remote sensing, almost as remote as we can get, with a suprahorizon movie looking for clouds in the south. A dust-devil survey rounds out the sol’s environmental observations, and then the geology theme group can get down to the serious business of looking at rocks. For Mastcam this means observing a group of bedrock targets all called “Observatory Trail” (one of which you can see in the middle of the image above), pointing out some interesting veins in “Point Loma,” and casting their gaze out toward “Black Butte” (which I could not think of a fun pun for…). ChemCam has a LIBS observation of “Cholla,” as well as two long-distance observations of the Texoli Butte and the boxwork structures. Our second sol is a little more restrained, as untargeted sols tend to be. But Curiosity will still have plenty of energy after a good rest. We’re taking advantage of that with an extra-long dust-devil movie. Even though we’re in our cloudy season, we still sometimes see dust lifting, and having that extra time to look out for it increases our chances of catching a wind gust or a dust devil in action. Alongside that we also have a Mastcam tau observation to keep an eye on the amount of dust in the atmosphere, and wrap up with a ChemCam AEGIS activity to autonomously choose a LIBS target.
Share Details Last Updated Mar 28, 2025 Related Terms Explore More 2 min read Sols 4491-4492: Classic Field Geology PoseArticle
2 days ago
3 min read Sols 4488-4490: Progress Through the Ankle-Breaking Terrain (West of Texoli Butte, Climbing Southward)
Article
4 days ago
3 min read Sols 4486-4487: Ankle-Breaking Kind of Terrain!
Article
7 days ago
Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
All Mars Resources
Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…
Rover Basics
Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…
Mars Exploration: Science Goals
The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…
As Starlink and Other Satellites Proliferate, Astronomers Learn to Manage Interference
Swarms of satellites launched by SpaceX and other companies are disrupting astronomical observations. Here's how scientists are coping
Arnaud Prost | Sky, Sea, Space | ESA Explores #12
Meet Arnaud Prost—aerospace engineer, professional diver, and member of ESA’s Astronaut Reserve. From flying aircraft to getting a taste of spacewalk simulation, his passion for exploration knows no bounds.
In this miniseries, we take you on a journey through the ESA Astronaut Reserve, diving into the first part of their Astronaut Reserve Training (ART) at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) near Cologne, Germany. Our “ARTists” are immersing themselves in everything from ESA and the International Space Station programme to the European space industry and institutions. They’re gaining hands-on experience in technical skills like spacecraft systems and robotics, alongside human behaviour, scientific lessons, scuba diving, and survival training.
ESA’s Astronaut Reserve Training programme is all about building Europe’s next generation of space explorers—preparing them for the opportunities of future missions in Earth orbit and beyond.
This interview was recorded in November 2024.
You can listen to this episode on all major podcast platforms.
Keep exploring with ESA Explores!
Learn more about Arnaud’s PANGAEA training here.
This spacecraft swarm could spot interstellar visitors zipping through our solar system
Week in images: 24-28 March 2025
Week in images: 24-28 March 2025
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Detecting Exoplanets by their Magnetospheres
There are a number of ways that exoplanets have been discovered over recent years but a team of astronomers have been exploring other ways. One particular exciting method is to hunt for them by finding their magnetospheres! Earth and Jupiter are a great example of planets that are surrounded by strong magnetospheres that interact with solar activity and when they do, they release radio emissions. The team of researchers have been demonstrating just how they could detect Jupiter’s radio emissions using simulated data. Not only would they be able to detect it, but they could also measure its rotation and even detect interactions with its moons!
The anus may have evolved from a hole originally used to release sperm
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The First Sightings of Hofstadter's Butterfly Emerged from a Happy Accident
In a first, physicists have directly seen Hofstadter’s butterfly—a long-sought-after fractal in the quantum realm
Gaia: Rewriting the story of the Milky Way
For over a decade, ESA’s Gaia mission has mapped our galaxy with stunning precision—rewriting the story of the Milky Way. As its mission enters a new phase, we look back at its most groundbreaking discoveries.
Webb Sees an Early Galaxy Blowing Away the Cosmic Fog
When the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in December 2021, one of its primary purposes was to see the first galaxies in the Universe forming just a few million years after the Big Bang. In true JWST style though, it has surpassed all expectations and now, a team of astronomers think they have gone even further back, seeing one galaxy clearing the early fog that obscured the Universe! The image represents a point in time 330 million years after the Big Bang and reveals a bright hydrogen emission from the fog surrounding a galaxy. It was somewhat unexpected though as current models predict it would have been blown away long ago!
Don't miss the partial solar eclipse today: Where, when and how to see it
How Long Do Pregnancy and Birth Affect the Body?
Data from 300,000 births reveal how essential biological measurements are altered by carrying and delivering a baby
Hubble Spots a Chance Alignment
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Hubble Spots a Chance Alignment This NASA/ESA Hubble image features the spiral galaxy NGC 5530. ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker
The subject of today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is the stunning spiral galaxy NGC 5530. This galaxy is situated 40 million light-years away in the constellation Lupus, the Wolf, and classified as a ‘flocculent’ spiral, meaning its spiral arms are patchy and indistinct.
While some galaxies have extraordinarily bright centers that host a feasting supermassive black hole, the bright source near the center of NGC 5530 is not an active black hole but a star within our own galaxy, only 10,000 light-years from Earth. This chance alignment gives the appearance that the star is at the dense heart of NGC 5530.
If you pointed a backyard telescope at NGC 5530 on the evening of September 13, 2007, you would have seen another bright point of light adorning the galaxy. That night, Australian amateur astronomer Robert Evans discovered a supernova, named SN 2007IT, by comparing NGC 5530’s appearance through the telescope to a reference photo of the galaxy. While it’s remarkable to discover even one supernova using this painstaking method, Evans has in fact discovered more than 40 supernovae this way! This particular discovery was truly serendipitous: it’s likely that the light from the supernova completed its 40-million-year journey to Earth just days before Evans spotted the explosion.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Share Details Last Updated Mar 28, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble Hubble Space TelescopeSince its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Hubble’s Galaxies
Hubble’s 35th Anniversary
Hubble’s Night Sky Challenge
Hubble Spots a Chance Alignment
- Hubble Home
- Overview
- Impact & Benefits
- Science
- Observatory
- Team
- News
- Multimedia
- More
2 min read
Hubble Spots a Chance Alignment This NASA/ESA Hubble image features the spiral galaxy NGC 5530. ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. ThilkerThe subject of today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is the stunning spiral galaxy NGC 5530. This galaxy is situated 40 million light-years away in the constellation Lupus, the Wolf, and classified as a ‘flocculent’ spiral, meaning its spiral arms are patchy and indistinct.
While some galaxies have extraordinarily bright centers that host a feasting supermassive black hole, the bright source near the center of NGC 5530 is not an active black hole but a star within our own galaxy, only 10,000 light-years from Earth. This chance alignment gives the appearance that the star is at the dense heart of NGC 5530.
If you pointed a backyard telescope at NGC 5530 on the evening of September 13, 2007, you would have seen another bright point of light adorning the galaxy. That night, Australian amateur astronomer Robert Evans discovered a supernova, named SN 2007IT, by comparing NGC 5530’s appearance through the telescope to a reference photo of the galaxy. While it’s remarkable to discover even one supernova using this painstaking method, Evans has in fact discovered more than 40 supernovae this way! This particular discovery was truly serendipitous: it’s likely that the light from the supernova completed its 40-million-year journey to Earth just days before Evans spotted the explosion.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Share Details Last Updated Mar 28, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble Hubble Space TelescopeSince its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Hubble’s Galaxies
Hubble’s 35th Anniversary
Hubble’s Night Sky Challenge
Safe, Cheap and Non-Invasive: Ultrasound Could Treat Cancer, Psychiatric Disorders and More
A bioengineer highlights the potential of low-intensity ultrasound for multiple uses, from enhanced drug delivery to the brain to combating cancer
Webb Sees Neptune's Auroras for the First Time
The outer planets remain somewhat of a mystery and Neptune is no exception. Voyager 2 has been the only probe that has visited the outermost planet but thankfully the James Webb Space Telescope is powerful enough to reveal it in all its glory. With its cameras regularly fixed on Neptune it has even picked up auroral activity in some of its latest images. The data was gathered back in 2023 using Webb’s Near-Infrared spectrograph which detected the tell tale sign of auroral activity, an emission line of trihydrogen cation. The element appears on other giant planets too when aurora are present.