Curiosity Blog, Sols 4568-4569: A Close Look at the Altadena Drill Hole and Tailings

Planetary geologist Sharon Wilson Purdy at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

World Planning Date: Wednesday, June 11, 2025

As Altadena approached the end of our drill campaign, curiosity continued to discover the foundation of Mars in the box structures on the Sharp Mountain. After both Chemin (Chemistry and Mineralogy) and Sam (sample analysis on Mars) were given a dust rock sample, the focus for Sols 4568 and 4569 was a closer look at the drill hole – the interior walls of the drill hole and the related wastes (the rock material was pushed by the drill).

In the above image, you can see that the tone (or color) of the rock exposed to the wall of the drill hole changes slightly with depth and that the drill wastes are a mixture of thin dust and more solid clusters. If you compare the Altadena drill site with the previous 42 drilling site, it can really appreciate the impressive color, texture and grain sizes in the rocks that curiosity analyzes in the last 12 years. Each drill hole indicates a window to the past and can help us understand how the old environment and climate on Mars develop over time.

In this two -storey plan, Chemcam, MastCam, Apxs and Crated Instruments coordinated his observations to display and characterize the chemistry of the drill hole and the wall of the waste before moving away from this site next weekend. Immediately outside our work area, Mastcam created two stereo mosaics to view the nearby box structures and layers in Texoli Butte. Chemcam combined the three long -distance RMI image to assess the layers at the base of the Mishe Mish Mokwa ”hill, to complete the visualization of nearby box structures, and to view the distant crater rim (about 90 kilometers or 56 miles away) and to view the sky atmosphere to investigate the scattering characteristics of the atmosphere. The Environmental Theme Group included observations that would measure the characteristics of the atmosphere and also include a dust-state research.