Poised to strike

This navigation camera image shows the arm deployed over Jake Matijevic.

(NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Now it may look like they are ready to jam with Jake (who was actually a real person who worked on previous missions like the MER rovers and the Sojourner rover; he died this year) but actually this is part of a test to check the change in the rover's attitude when the arm is fully outstretched (after all the thing is HEAVY; 33kg when fully outstretched to a maximum length of 2.1m).

I did forget to mention in the previous post about there going to be a ChemCam investigation. Shooting the rover with ChemCam's laser will allow scientists to compare chemical readouts of Jake against the readouts from the APXS (note that the APXS can only detect elements heavier than sodium so the ChemCam collaboration is important as it can detect elements lighter than sodium like oxygen which is an abundant component in rocks).

Let me end this post with a panorama showing the Sol 43 neighbourhood.

Sol 43 scene (NASA/JPL/panorama by me)