What Curiosity Looks Like From 200 Kilometers Up

So far I hear immediate plans to look at the exposed bedrock, and secondary plans to go to the intersection of the three different areas you see in the image. The latter is because they can use that area to sort out the basement, here bedrock, position vs other layers.

The upper light brown area is the edge of the large alluvial fan that covers much of north Gale crater. That is interesting in itself, since it can have trapped and transported recent organics, as well as have exposed rocks that have been modified by any extant life.

[Seems they licked the longstanding problem of "desert varnish" that already Darwin worked on just in time for this. It is pretty much constrained to be microbial action by a recent paper, its growth rates in best conditions is beyond other weathering. So rock surfaces can tell of life. Not that I personally think extant life survives on martian surfaces. But at least it should be excluded.]

The lightly cratered area where Curiosity landed has a younger surface for whatever reason, and the more cratered area just visible at the right corner of the image has an older surface.

The latter travel plans takes it almost in opposite directions of your outcrop. On the other hand there seems to be a larger one that they pass on the way.

The distance is ~ 600 m IIRC, which would take a couple of weeks. I hear they estimate travel over the Aeolis Palus, the IAU name for the norther plane, and arrival at Aeolis Mons, the IAU name for the mountain, in ~ 1 tellusian year.

So maybe they won’t take too many side trips while traveling. If you look at the HiRISE latest pass over Curiosity, the Mons foothills looks positively barred by sand dunes. They will have to work around a lot of potential rover traps as they go, hopefully they have options outside the image pass. (They should, I hear some handful of possible routes have been suggested already.)