Sol 2233-2235: Monitoring Dynamic Modern Mars

It’s the windy season on Mars, and Curiosity’s activities this weekend include taking oodles of images at different times throughout the day to catch how the wind moves sand and dust around. We’ll be taking 15 separate Mastcam images of both the “Sand Loch” and “Windyedge” areas throughout the weekend, as well as several MARDI images to monitor changes on the ground underneath the vehicle. A similar campaign we did back at the Bagnold Dunes helped refine models of regional-scale wind patterns at Gale and provided important insights into the physics of how sand moves under the modern day Martian atmosphere.