A spot of bother

As publicized, it appears Curiosity has made its move to traverse the rather striking looking sand bar at Dingo Gap. However, it looks like it is hung up a little. The panorama below, made from sol 533 Mastcam images, shows that the stowed robotic arm, with the nameplate on it, has touched the sand on the far side of the dune, which is just a few feet across here.


BTW, to make this panorama “stitch” I had to manually add control points by matching the tiny pebbles in the sand, so I’m quite proud of myself!

UPDATE: This “hangup” is just an illusion caused by the featureless sand background. The appearance I mistook for marks in the sand is actually strapping holding the nameplate to the round support arm. The support arm itself has the appearance of a shadow on the sand leading to my erroneous “gestalt” perception.

Here is a Navcam view from the same position which has a similar appearance, but in this case we can see that the drill bit holder ( attached to the front of Curiosity ) is beneath the nameplate, so the nameplate and arm are well clear of the sand.

… END UPDATE
Here is an animated gif from the sol 533 Front Hazcam images showing the approach to the crest of the dune.

The Mastcam panorama was taken around 2014-02-04 18:37:37 UTC whereas the last frame of the gif was at 2014-02-04 18:07:27 UTC, and the sol 534 Front Hazcam view is unchanged from sol 533, so I’m not sure how that works out.

… well, this just in: According to the sol 535 Front Hazcam view, shown here as an anaglyph, it looks like Curiosity has cleared Dingo Gap!

I’m not sure they’ve reached the promised land of no rocks, though.

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