Thursday 9th August Sol 3

We wait for each pass by Odyssey  or Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)  to return more images.   Our navigation cameras (NavCam) are producing the first of our panoramic mosaics.  There are patches of the underlying bedrock exposed by the Skycrane rockets as Curiosity descended.  Should we  spend our valuable rover time studying them?  Were they deposited by water?  You can also see the crater rim in the distance, this was thrown  up during the great impact ~4 billion years ago.  Fascinating but we wont have time to go there.  Perhaps some of the crater wall fragments were brought down by water over the crater floor.

Lots of firsts also coming through – like the first radiation measurements made on Mars.  Mars is thought to have  a harsh uv environment, this will tell us the true nature of this and the implications for the Mars environment. 

We also now know our exact landing spot – one of the Engineering/EDL team won the landing site ‘bingo’ competition...