NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover

Curiosity Rover - Focus Stacked MAHLI images form Sol 4594 (July 9, 2025)

Cross Bedding at Volcán Peña Blanca

Credits NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Mosaic assembled from 15 Bayer reconstructed left mast camera images. The ridge of sedimentary rock is called 'Volcán Peña Blanca'

published July 7

Published July 7, 2025

15 overlapping images

This image sees the sensor head of the Alpha-Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) instrument placed on a target to acquire data. The image was taken by one of the Front Hazard Avoidance Cameras (Front HazCam) onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4590 July 5, 2025 at 11:24:54 UTC. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The APXS for MSL is an improved version of the APXS that flew successfully on Pathfinder and the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. The MSL APXS takes advantage of a combination of the terrestrial standard methods Particle-Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) and X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) to determine elemental chemistry. It uses curium-244 sources for X-ray spectroscopy to determine the abundance of major elements down to trace elements from sodium to bromine and beyond.

The instrument consists of a main electronics unit in the rover's body and a sensor head mounted on the robotic arm. Measurements are taken by deploying the sensor head towards a desired sample, placing the sensor head in contact or hovering typically less than 2 cm away, and measuring the emitted X-ray spectrum for 15 minutes to 3 hours without the need of further interaction by the rover. At the end of the measurement, the rover retrieves the science data of 32 kilobytes, containing up to 13 consecutively taken spectra and engineering data. The internal APXS software splits the total measurement into equal time slots with an adjustable cycle time parameter. This allows us to check for repeatability and to select spectra with sufficient spectral quality.

The MSL APXS can activate an internal Peltier cooler for the X-ray detector chip. This results in a sufficient spectral resolution (FWHM) of below 200 eV at 6.4 keV below ~ -5 deg C and best FWHM of < 150 eV below ~ -15 deg C environmental temperature. Compared to the APXS on MER, where the best FWHM was reached at temperatures below ~ -45 deg C, this allows a significantly larger operational time window for APXS analysis.

The MSL APXS has approximately 3 times the sensitivity for low Z (atomic number) elements and approximately 6 times for higher Z elements than the MER APXS. A full analysis with detection limits of 100 ppm for Ni and ~ 20 ppm for Br now requires 3 hours, while quick look analysis for major and minor elements at ~ 0.5% abundance, such as Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Fe, or S, can be done in 10 minutes or less.

On MER, the elements detected by the APXS in rock and soil samples are typically Na, Mg, Al, Si, P, S, Cl, K, Ca, Ti, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, Zn, and Br. Elevated levels of Ge, Ga, Pb, and Rb were found in some of the MER samples.

The sampled area is about 1.7 cm in diameter when the instrument is in contact with the sample. A standoff results in gradually lower intensity and an increased diameter of the measured spot. Low Z element X-rays stem from the topmost 5 microns of the sample, higher Z elements like Fe are detected from the upper ~50 microns. Sample preparation is not needed; the APXS results average the composition over the sampled area and the oxide abundances measured are renormalized to 100%. However, on MSL, a dust removal tool (brush) is available to remove loose material from a rock surface before making an APXS measurement.

View full screen to see the diverse rock types [5506x1012px]

The mosaic is assembled from 10 overlapping RMI images from the CHEMCAM instrument, the images were acquired on Sol 4589 (July 4, 2025) and assembled in MS-ICE. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL

Nothing of interest to the team here as they drove away the next morning

NavCam mosaic (partial)

This image was taken by the Front Hazard Avoidance Camera (Front HazCam) onboard Curiosity rover on Sol 4588 (2025-07-03 09:15:59 UTC). Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

It shows a lighter toned rock close to the rover.

The rover is pointing Southwest after the drive to the down-slope drive of 23.4 meters (76.8 ft) towards the Northwest

Mosaic of overlapping post-drive L-NavCam images - NASA/JPL-Caltech

The yellow line shows the path of the drive on sol 4587

post drive data from JPL

The drive path is highlighted in yellow.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/UofA

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Assembled from 15 overlapping Bayer reconstructed L-MastCam images. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/fredk

NASA's Mars Exploration Program seeks to understand whether Mars was, is, or can be a habitable world. Missions like Mars Pathfinder, Mars Exploration Rovers, Mars Science Laboratory and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, among many others, have provided important information in understanding of the habitability of Mars. This poster imagines a future day when we have achieved our vision of human exploration of Mars and takes a nostalgic look back at the great imagined milestones of Mars exploration that will someday be celebrated as “historic sites.”

Source https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/visions-of-the-future/

The drive path is highlighted yellow

The raw drive data is released by JPL shortly after each drive. this table is generated from that raw data. I've also added a few additional data points based on the data