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Curiosity Blog, Sols 5029-5035: Back in the Lab

A black-and-white, downward-facing image from the Curiosity rover's Navigation Camera. Parts of the rover's metallic hardware frame the bottom and left edges of the image, including cylindrical mechanisms, structural joints, and a small checkered calibration target on the lower right. The rover casts a long, distinct diagonal shadow across the Martian surface below. The terrain consists of flat, light-colored bedrock covered in a prominent network of intersecting cracks. Patches of darker sand or soil and small, loose rock fragments are scattered across the surface, and a single, small circular drill hole or contact mark is clearly visible in the smooth bedrock near the center-right.

Image of the “Basque Lakes” drill hole and surrounding tailings (the small mound near the lower right corner of the workspace bedrock). NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera (Navcam) on Sept. 24, 2026 — Sol 5024, or Martian day 5,024 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 05:46:29 UTC.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Written by Michelle Minitti, MAHLI Deputy Principal Investigator

Earth planning date: Friday, Oct. 1, 2026

The majority of Curiosity plans involve mosaics from Mastcam and ChemCam, chemistry analyses from ChemCam and APXS, images from MAHLI and MARDI, and systematic measurements from REMS, RAD, and DAN. It is only when we stop to drill that we fully live up to our Mars Science Laboratory designation, using CheMin and SAM to analyze Martian rock. This was one such week, where our focus was wrapping up CheMin analysis of a sample from the “Basque Lakes” drill hole (pictured above), preparing SAM for its analysis, and analyzing the sample with the SAM tunable laser spectrometer (TLS). The CheMin data were key to SAM deciding to analyze the sample at all, and SAM will wait to receive the results from the TLS run (measurement of the volatiles present) to decide if they want to follow up with a separate mass spectrometry analysis next week.

The laboratory activities require a significant portion of the daily power budget of the rover so the rest of the payload largely takes a back seat during drill campaigns, a worthy trade for CheMin and SAM’s valuable data. However, using the power that was available, we gathered data to contextualize our drill location and continued our systematic environmental monitoring. Mastcam acquired a 360-degree mosaic of our surroundings to build a full picture of the geologic setting of the sample. Its color and improved resolution relative to Navcam also guided subsequent science requests, such as more focused Mastcam imaging of structures near the workspace, and ChemCam RMI imaging of the “Cordillera” butte. Mastcam, coupled with Navcam, also planned a series of seven photometry observations spread across fixed times of day. These observations evaluate how the observed spectral characteristics of targets change as the Sun angle on them changes. They help us better interpret images from the rover and from cameras in orbit. ChemCam gathered more chemistry data from the variety of materials in the workspace, from the Basque Lakes drill hole interior, to sand ripples (“French Creek”) covering the bedrock, to loose gray clasts of unknown origin (“Wooley” and “Fireside”) sprinkled across the workspace. Our environmental monitoring activities included regular REMS, RAD, and DAN measurements and Navcam and Mastcam monitoring of dust loading in the atmosphere, cloud activity, and dust-devil activity.

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