Curiosity is one of only two operating vehicles on all of Mars, half a world away from Jezero crater. So it was a bit unsettling when Perseverance pulled up to a slab of rock after a recent drive and observed freshly made scrape marks.
I’m not often surprised anymore by whitish or light-toned materials near a rover since Spirit uncovered all that whitish silica with its dragging dead front wheel, all those years ago. It seems we often find that Mars is red only until you literally scratch the surface.
I have to say that Percy often drives right past plenty of rocks I’d like to investigate more. I know that Ken Farley et al. are doing just that with remote sensing (the results of which we aren’t privy to for quite a while), so they have some idea of what they’re looking at, but I’m often tantalized by a lot of this stuff.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the meetings between the science teams on which rocks to investigate. There must be disagreements between the scientists :) I guess we would have only travelled a few hundred meters if they stopped at every rock / target that looked interesting to one of the team, instead of the 32.51 km (20.20 miles) we have traversed. As for the colour, I like to look at the colour of the tailings when they drill holes, there are many gray rocks, but quite a few reddish ones as well. This illustrates it well for me (all 42 sample holes) https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA26403.jpg
