Moving on to the drilling site

The mourning's done and we must move on. And so is Curiosity! Since December 14 last year, the rover has driven 3 times. The last drive was done on January 4 this year totalling about 3m, bringing the total odometry to 702m. The previous drive on sol 133 positioned the rover next to an interesting feature called 'Snake river' for obvious reasons.

Sol 133 navigation panorama (NASA/JPL/panorama by Abraham Samma)

 Snake river is a sinuous rocky feature which looks like it is cutting through the neat stake of layered rocks that brought the rover to Yellowknife bay. That shows that the feature is probably younger than the layers themselves as you need the layers to be there before the feature can come into place. This is the principle of cross-cutting relationships which was first mentioned by the Scottish naturalist James Hutton in his work Theory of the Earth in 1795.

Left eye navigation image of Snake river on sol 147 (NASA/JPL)

What could it be? Haven't a clue. My cautious hunch though is that it could be a column of volcanic rock called a 'dike'. Whatever it may be it is certainly interesting to the rover science team because the rover is currently parked next to the feature as of sol 147. You can see the rover's current position here.

Sol 147 navigation camera mosaic. The arm can be seen raised with the drill pointing towards us (NASA/JPL/mosaic by Abraham Samma)

That's your Curiosity update. We can look forward to some drilling next week as the rover team begins selecting targets for potential drilling. That will be another first for the rover. What fun!