This story was originally published by NASA and is unaltered.

(C) NASA
This story was originally published by NASA and is unaltered.
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Sols 4341-4342: A Bumpy Road [1]

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Date: 2024-10

After the imaging, we are ready to drive. This terrain has been very tricky. While the slopes are not steep, this is a very rocky area, as you can see in the image, making finding a safe path difficult. We don’t only need to worry about driving over things that are too big or too sharp, but we also have to make sure not to scrape the wheels along the side of a rock or steer them into a rock, making them wedge and stall. It also means that we do not have good stereo data out very far because the rocks block our view. The last complication is that we have to drive backwards — otherwise, the rover hardware will block Curiosity's view of Earth during the time we want to send her the new plan. When we drive backwards, the rover hardware will block Curiosity’s view, so we need to turn to get a clear view in our images. We also take additional frames to be sure we can find the best path for the next drive. With all this, we ended up being able to drive about 32 meters today (about 105 feet). After a short diversion to get around a steering hazard, we were able to drive a fairly straight route along the path to our next major imaging stop. After the drive, we have our normal post-drive imaging, including a twilight MARDI image.

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[1] Url: https://science.nasa.gov/blog/sols-4341-4342-a-bumpy-road/

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