Powerful Planning: A Journey Through a Busy Sol with Limited Resources as the SOWG Chair

As the SOWG Chair for Sol 513, I had a busy day ahead of me. My main task was to plan activities for the rover, with a focus on capturing a full set of MAHLI images of its wheels. These images would be taken in between short drives to ensure that the entire surface of the wheels was imaged.

However, I knew that these activities would require a lot of power, so I had to make sure that we didn’t drain the rover’s battery too much. This meant that we had to be careful with our planning and ensure that we included some post-drive scientific tasks in the schedule.

I decided to include an active measurement of hydrogen below the surface using DAN, a cloud search using Navcam, and the necessary imaging to plan targeted observations for Sol 514. Despite the constraints, I was able to make sure that these tasks were included in the plan without draining too much power from the rover’s battery.

The planning process started earlier than usual, as I needed to send command sequences to the rover by 5 PM Pacific time. It wasn’t as early as the previous day when it was still dark out during my commute to work, but it was still a productive day nonetheless. Overall, I felt proud of what we were able to accomplish with such limited resources and tight deadlines.