Housedon-Hill - A ChemCam/RMI mega mosaic to investigate distant features
The ChemCam Remote Microscopic Imager (RMI) onboard Curiosity was originally designed to document the tiny areas analyzed by ChemCam’s laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) technique on rocks at few meters distance around the rover. The RMI produces 1024 x 1024 pixel black and white images directly from ChemCam’s telescope focal plane. Early in the mission, it was recognized that, thanks to its powerful optics, RMI could also play a role as a long-distance reconnaissance tool, complementing other cameras on the remote sensing mast, and taking advantage of its very long 700 mm focal length. Imaging areas several kilometers from the rover provides pictures that are very complementary to orbital observations and gives a more human-like, ground-based perspective. Between sols 2878 and 2921, Curiosity stayed parked at the same place to perform various rock sampling analyses. This opportunity was used to target very distant areas of interest, daily building an RMI mosaic of 216 overlapping images covering an area ranging from the bottom layers of Mount Sharp to the edge of Vera Rubin Ridge. This product is so far the largest RMI mosaic acquired during the entire mission.