Curiosity Mars rover Sols 5043-5049: Preparing to drill at 'Nazca'

After completing the Basque Lakes drilling campaign, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover returned to a spot a few meters from the 'Chiu Chiu' rock block to prepare for its next drilling campaign at the newly named 'Nazca' target. Before the pre-drill payload test, the team scheduled MAHLI quantitative relief model observations and a ChemCam LIBS 150-shot laser depth profile experiment to characterize the 'disc-and-needle' crystal morphology. The plan also includes nighttime imaging of Phobos to estimate the size of Martian cloud particles.