Curiosity Blog, Sols 5022-5028: Cashing in at Cache Creek

Written by Lucy Thompson, Senior Research Scientist, University of New Brunswick, Canada Earth planning date: Friday, Sept. The institutional report frames the development in practical terms and ties it to the broader mission or observing effort.

That matters because cosmology operates at the edge of what current instruments can measure, where systematic errors and model assumptions are never trivial. Small discrepancies between independent measurements have historically pointed toward missing physics rather than simple calibration errors, and the ongoing tension in the Hubble constant is a live example of how a persistent disagreement between methods can reshape the theoretical landscape. Each new dataset that approaches this territory with independent systematics adds real information to a problem that has resisted easy resolution for more than a decade. 23, 2026, Sol 5023, or Martian day 5, 023 of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission, at 03: 56: 10 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Written by Lucy Thompson, Senior Research Scientist, University of New Brunswick, Canada Earth planning date: Friday, Sept.

25, 2026 Before we landed, the area of Gale crater that we planned to explore was divided up into rectangular parcels with designated names. The area in Canada includes exposures of oceanic crust, marine sediments, volcanic rocks, and glacial deposits, as well as being home to lakes with unusual chemistry that may be.

This week we successfully drilled into our 48th rock target in Gale crater (“Basque Lakes”), from the Cache Creek quad. As an APXS uplink lead and strategic planner this week I helped to plan the triage contact science on the potential Basque Lakes drill target and communicate the results to the.

We placed APXS in contact with the rock target to measure its chemistry, and the MAHLI camera to within 1 centimeter (about 0.4 inches) to examine in detail the textures. Despite significant power constraints associated with drilling and the accompanying analyses, as well as an aging rover, we were also able to plan additional activities.

The relevance goes beyond one dataset because even small shifts in measured parameters can matter when the field is testing the limits of the standard cosmological model. The Lambda-CDM framework describes the observable universe with remarkable economy, but its success rests on two components, dark matter and dark energy, whose physical nature remains entirely unknown. Any credible measurement that tightens or loosens the constraints on those components moves the entire theoretical enterprise forward, regardless of whether the immediate result looks dramatic on its own terms.

Analysis of the Basque Lakes drill sample should continue next week with delivery of material to SAM, which will reveal more nuggets of information regarding the history of this. Visit Mission Updates Want to learn more about Curiosity’s science instruments.

Because the account originates with NASA News Releases, it functions best as a primary institutional report that is close to the data and operations, not as independent scientific validation. Institutional communications are produced by organizations with legitimate interests in presenting their work in a favorable light, which does not make them unreliable but does make them partial. Details that complicate the narrative, including instrument limitations, unexpected failures and results below projections, tend to be minimized relative to progress messages. Technical documentation and peer-reviewed publications, where they exist, provide the complementary layer that institutional releases cannot substitute.

The next step is to see whether the effect survives when independent surveys, different calibration strategies and tighter control of systematic uncertainties enter the picture. Programmes such as Euclid, DESI and the Rubin Observatory will deliver datasets over the next several years that cover the same parameter space with largely independent methods. If the current signal persists through those tests, its theoretical implications will become impossible to set aside.

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