Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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The imaging chamber was empty, but it captured some out of focus pebbles on the ground under the cache storage area (I assembled all 16 tiles) they first took a 16 tile image of the empty chamber back on sol 88. I assume that was an engineering checkout of the the camera.
I have an unusual guess as to why they imaged it. Not sure if you noticed, but there are motes of dust on the NavCam lenses, the motes are particularly noticeable in the all-sky images from sol 1323. I’m assuming that could have been the result of a dust devil, or we are in a particularly dusty area kicked up by the prevailing wind? Not sure if you also noticed we can no longer see the far rim wall of Jezero (due to recent increasing dust levels) If we’ve noticed, the team will have noticed as well, so they may have imaged the open chamber of the CacheCam to see if there is any dust on the mirror it uses, or the CacheCam camera lens. Maybe a little far fetched, but I often have an over active mind :)
The rover has just driven South (a short distance on 1324) and it is currently pointing East. It could be an intermediate waypoint in a longer drive, but why East? Expand my theory to moving the cameras away from the prevailing wind :) (active mind LOL)
EDIT The sol 1324 waypoint mentioned earlier was an intermediate waypoint, the remainder of the drive was to the West. Close to 100 meters and a climb of ~25 meters. Waiting for the formal data, will share ASAP
Interesting! CacheCam isn’t used very often. Would dust on the lens impact operations significantly?
Unless it was a significant amount of dust on the camera lens or the mirror that it uses to look down into the imaging chamber I doubt that it would affect operations at all, as they only use the camera to ensure the sample is still in the tube prior to sealing it. But why else image it without a tube, it appears to be a waste of bandwidth as they acquired and then downlinked 20 tiles in all from the CacheCam. Hopefully the team will enlighten us soon why it was imaged, if not we can wait for the mission managers report in the PDS, those reports of often goldmines of information. The report covering sol 1324 activities should be available in the M2020 PDS (release number 12) scheduled to be issued on April 3, 2025 https://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/mars2020/index.htm
With all the apparent lithologic diversity and patches of flattish bedrock as we’ve gone higher and higher up the rim, I’d be more surprised if they hadn’t thought about coring. They’ve been shooting a lot more close-ups lately, that’s for sure, and not just on the “white rocks”. I assumed they were going to wait until reaching some accessible, heavy and stable boulder at Pico Turquino, and I still think they will. Nonetheless, it would be hard to miss the pretty distinct geologic units as we’ve sidled up to that hill, and erosion clearly has some interesting tales to tell around here. I definitely haven’t been able to complain about the rover climbing too fast and blowing past interesting stuff lately.
