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hi I'm Rick Welch Tactical Operations

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mission manager and this is your

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Curiosity rover report as many of you

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know curiosity was in a period called

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solar conjunction during this time Mars

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and Earth are on opposite sides of the

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Sun it can be hard to communicate

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between the rover and Earth during this

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time and so we did a minimum set of

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science and we all took a well-deserved

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Spring Break our first activity after

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solar conjunction was to update

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curiosity software we developed that

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software here on earth and tested it out

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in our testbed to make sure it worked

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right we then sent it up to the rover

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this new software has capabilities to

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allow curiosity and navigate on our own

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something we call autonomous navigation

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or Auto nav up until now curiosity's

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just use basic driving or what we call

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blind driving where the rover planners

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here on earth do most of the planning

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for her the Auto nav capability will

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really help curiosity select safe routes

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and make better progress each day

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another update was for additional

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onboard safety checks for the chemcam

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instrument cam cams telescopic eye can

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be sensitive to the Sun it's therefore

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important that we never point directly

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at the Sun for a long period of time

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with the chemcam we've updated the

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onboard software to calculate where the

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Sun is and make sure that the chemcam

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doesn't get pointed in the wrong

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direction the plans for upcoming

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activities include getting calibration

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images from the navigation cameras at

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the top of curiosity's mast we switch to

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the B side computer before solar

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conjunction and this meant we also

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switch to using a different set of

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navigation cameras the calibration

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images will help ensure that the cameras

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are working properly before we drive to

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a new location and we may be drilling

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again soon

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scientists and engineers have been hard

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at work looking for new targets and

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where we could drill one such target is

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just a few meters west from the rover

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and could be a potential second drill

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site we're planning a short drive or

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bumped into this position hopefully by

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the end of this week so we'll be ready

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for our second drilling campaign this