Mars Rover Planning: A Day in the Life of a Sol 513 SOWG Chair

As the Sol 513 SOWG Chair, I spent my day planning rover activities with a focus on capturing MAHLI images of its wheels. To ensure that the entire surface of the wheels was imaged, we planned for short drives between image captures. However, due to the power requirements of these activities, we had to be careful not to drain the rover’s battery too much.

Despite this constraint, we still managed to include some post-drive scientific tasks in our plan. We used DAN to actively measure hydrogen below the surface and conducted a cloud search using Navcam. We also took necessary imaging to plan targeted observations for Sol 514.

The planning process began earlier than usual as command sequences had to be sent to the rover by 5 PM Pacific time. Although it wasn’t as early as the previous day when I commuted to work in the dark, it was still a productive day of planning for the rover’s activities on Sol 513.