Figure 9. Portion of a Mastcam color mosaic showing the scuff generated by the left front wheel in the Sands of Forvie. The sand is slightly cohesive and exhibits a reddish tint. Data acquired on Sol 2995 during Curiosity ’s Sands of Forvie campaign. Note the presence of relatively bright grains in the scuffed sands, and the darker, bluer, coarser grains along this large ripple crest and flank. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
One of the considerations for Curiosity ’s measurement campaigns for both sand deposits is that rover activities were accomplished at their margins. This was a consequence of the rover’s mobility being highly limited in deep sands (Arvidson et al., 2016a). Given that the local bedrock adjacent to the sand deposits is relatively friable and produces a fine-grained regolith (e.g., Weitz et al., 2022), we investigated the extent of the contributions of sand grains weathered from local bedrock on the composition of the margin sand deposits.Curiosity acquired a pair of APXS measurements on the Fleurac sand targets located just to the north of the SoF. The APXS instrument fields of view (FOV) were offset by approximately two FOV radii (i.e., ~2 cm; VanBommel et al., 2016), with each containing a mixture of sand and blocky material disrupted from bedrock deposits (Figure 10).