Written by Diana Hayes, Graduate Student at York University, Toronto
Earth planning date: Friday, Oct. 10, 2025
This week was one of seasonal changes and milestones for the mission. As was mentioned several weeks ago, Mars has now moved out of its “cloudy season” and is transitioning into the “dusty season” as the planet moves closer to the Sun. This means that we should expect to see an increase in dust lifting and dust-devil activity over the next several months. With more dust in the atmosphere, we expect to lose the beautifully clear skies that have allowed us to take pictures of features at tremendous distances from the rover, like a mountain 57 miles (91 kilometers) away, outside of Gale Crater. We’ll also be keeping an eye out for the possible development of a global dust storm this season, as one has not occurred since 2018.
Back in August, we celebrated 13 Earth years since Curiosity landed in Gale back in 2012. This Monday, Oct. 6, a bit after 1 a.m. UTC (8 p.m. EDT Oct. 5), our intrepid rover marked its seventh full Mars year on the surface. (Because Mars is farther from the Sun than Earth is, a year on Mars — or one full trip around the Sun — lasts 687 Earth days.) Curiosity is only the second vehicle on Mars to reach that milestone, behind only Opportunity. Although Curiosity has not yet matched Opportunity’s longevity or distance driven, over the last seven Mars years we have put together the longest and most comprehensive record of the modern Martian climate. REMS has been recording weather conditions at least once an hour almost every hour since 2012, and RAD has now measured surface radiation conditions for more than a full solar cycle, data that will be critical to future human exploration of Mars. We’ve taken more than 3,000 cloud movies and countless more observations of atmospheric opacity, dust lifting, and dust-devil activity. I’ve been a member of our environmental science team for just over five (Earth) years now (or about 2 ½ Mars years), and I can still hardly believe that I’ve been able to help contribute to this incredible legacy. Although our well-traveled rover is now in its fifth Extended Mission, as a team we have no intention of slowing down any time soon.
Other than celebrating these milestones, this week was focused on setting up for the first of our two planned drills in the boxwork region. This first drill will be in one of the boxwork “hollows.” We’re currently targeting a hollow we’ve nicknamed “Monte Grande,” with the goal that we’ll be set up to drill there next week. Once we’re done at Monte Grande, we plan to drive up to one of the raised ridges that give the boxwork region its spiderweb-like appearance. By comparing the results of these two drill campaigns, our hope is that we’ll be able to gain a better understanding of the processes in Mars’ past that led to the formation of these fascinating features.
As we prepare to drill, both science theme groups continued their usual cadence of contact science and remote sensing to characterize the local geology and environment. This weekend will be particularly busy on the environmental science side of the mission, with coordinated observations with APXS and ChemCam to track seasonal changes in the composition of the atmosphere. We’ll also be using SAM’s Tunable Laser Spectrometer instrument to measure the amount of atmospheric methane at Gale. This is an activity that we’ve performed periodically over the mission, and has inspired much spirited debate over the sources and destruction mechanisms of Martian methane.
Here’s to many more years of roving and scientific discovery!
