I have a hunch this valley is hiding many more geological secrets. If you look at the map, Curiosity is finally arriving at the more interesting bits of Mt. Sharp.
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity/location-map/
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity/location-map/
It struck me that I have no idea how curiosity is instructed to move
I suspect someone can't be sitting in front of a computer with a joystick, moving a foot, waiting for curiosity to move a foot, then move another foot...
My next thought is nasa creates a route based on the map and then provides route data to curiosity. But there's no GPS (again, I assume). So is it all dead-reckoning? NASA somehow calculates 'move 100 ft forward, turn left 80 degrees, move 10 ft forward", etc?
(I am also assuming NASA uses metric)
OR does curiosity make its own decisions somehow?
I gotta go google some stuff now
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/learn/video/mars-in-a-minute-ho...
The last time that I looked at a map of Curiosity's location it was somewhere around Darwin and I suppose Cooperstown hadn't been named yet. And the map was certainly not interactive.