Bruce Murray Space Image Library

Fighting the wind blowing the Sebina dump pile

Fighting the wind blowing the Sebina dump pile
Fighting the wind blowing the Sebina dump pile On sol 1533, Curiosity dumped the leftover powder from the sample it had drilled at Sebina on sol 1495. Overnight, the rover placed the APXS instrument on the engineers' best-predicted spot for the location of the dump pile. In the morning of sol 1534, only a small amount of the reddish dump pile remained, the material that had been protected by APXS overnight. The rest had blown away in the wind. In its place, a broad pile of larger, darker sand grains that had fallen in the wind shadow made by the rover turret. NASA / JPL / MSSS / Emily Lakdawalla