This blog post covers rover operations from Dec. 27-Jan 2.

While many reflect on the past and bid it farewell, there’s a lot of exciting science to come in the next year. While many were enjoying the days between the Christmas and New Year holidays in the US, at JPL we were working to finish up sampling activities at Issole. We'll soon bid an Auld Lang Syne to the Séítah region.

As lead Mapping Specialist, I get enjoy looking at the road ahead for the rover. We’ll start be looping back around Séítah east, following our path back towards the Octavia E. Butler Landing site, then curling counter-clockwise to the delta front. In this mission rewind, we get a chance to look at some of the intriguing outcrops we’ve seen before like at Citadelle (where we first grabbed cores 1 & 2, around the sol 180 position on August 21, 2021), perhaps a new look at the unique layering at Mure (sol 168 on August 8, 2021), or even some of the rocks we didn’t get as close to as we wanted, just east of the landing site (sol 73 on May 4th (be with you!), 2021).

Remember to follow along as we explore with our online rover map that we update every time we drive. My New Year’s resolution for the mission is to continue bringing you new maps and help scientists find the best rocks for the rover to explore throughout 2022!

By Dr. Fred Calef III