Curiosity Blog, Sols 4995-5001: 5,000 (Martian) Days on Mars
NASA's Curiosity rover blog for sols 4995–5001, written by William Farrand of the Space Science Institute with an Earth planning date of Friday, Aug. 28, 2026, marks two milestones. Curiosity has climbed past 1 kilometer of elevation from its landing site on the floor of Gale crater — far exceeding the 106 meters (about 348 feet) that Spirit climbed to Husband Hill in Gusev crater in August 2005 — and Saturday, Aug. 29, will be 5,000 Martian days, or sols, since landing, which is more than 5,137 Earth days because a Martian day lasts 24.6 hours. The blog congratulates the engineers and scientists who made this landmark possible.
The rover's current science focus is a long, narrow, large wind-formed ripple named Chocolatal. Observations will help determine whether it is a transverse aeolian ridge, or TAR, a class of features seen across Mars from orbit whose long axis is perpendicular to the prevailing local wind. Although Curiosity has examined potential TARs before, Chocolatal sits higher on the slopes of Mount Sharp, raising questions about whether it contains the same granular materials as lower TARs or different grain sizes and layering, and about how the ridge formed, whether it is active, how it migrated, and, if immobile, how it stabilized.
At the start of the planning week, Curiosity was en route to the ripple and encountered targets along the way. In Monday's two-sol plan, the team planned in-situ examinations of light-toned bedrock on the rover's path. Some nearby rocks had dark-toned thick coatings or remnant layers, which were targeted for chemical analysis by ChemCam's Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) instrument. Mastcam and ChemCam Remote Micro Imager (RMI) mosaics were planned for layers in buttes along the route and for more distant sand ripples.
A midweek planning session took advantage of the last drive, leaving Curiosity only a few meters from Chocolatal. ChemCam targeted sand at the base of Chocolatal and nearby bedrock, and stand-off Mastcam high-resolution image mosaics of the ripple were also planned. The midweek drive put one of the rover's wheels into Chocolatal before backing off slightly, so the end-of-week plan could include contact science within the trenched region. The excerpt ends as the final planning session of the week begins.