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  • Mars Rover Curiosity Drilling Rock Chosen

    For more than a month now, Mars Rover Curiosity has been preparing to test its hammering drill on a Martian rock. The rover team took great pains to scan a low-lying area called “Yellowknife Bay” for the perfect rock specimen.

    Today, researchers have announced that the a flat rock with pale veins has been chosen as the target. Curiosity is currently on-route to the rock, which NASA has named “John Klein” in tribute to the former Mars Science Laboratory deputy manager of the same name who died in 2011. If the rock still looks interesting to researchers when the rover gets a closer view, it will become the first Martian rock to be drilled for a sample.

    “Drilling into a rock to collect a sample will be this mission’s most challenging activity since the landing,” said Richard Cook, Mars Science Laboratory project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “It has never been done on Mars. The drill hardware interacts energetically with Martian material we don’t control. We won’t be surprised if some steps in the process don’t go exactly as planned the first time through.”

    The rover team is hoping to find evidence of Mars’ watery past inside John Klein. The rock was chosen because of the light-toned veins that were detected using Curiosity’s Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam), indicating elevated levels of calcium, sulfur, and hydrogen.

    “These veins are likely composed of hydrated calcium sulfate, such as bassinite or gypsum,” said Nicolas Mangold, ChemCam team member at the Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique de Nantes. “On Earth, forming veins like these requires water circulating in fractures.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Takes a Fourth Scoop

    NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity took its fourth scoop of Martian soil over the weekend and yesterday was issued commands to place a bit of the sample into the rover’s Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument. Another sieved portion of the scoop was to be placed into Curiosity’s observation tray.

    The rest of the sample will be vibrated in Curiosity’s sample processing chambers to scrub its internal surfaces. This is a cleaning process that was also performed with the rover’s first and second scoops. A later scoop will be the first to be placed into Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument to determine its chemical composition.

    Last week, Curiosity’s third scoop became the first delivered to the CheMin instrument. That instrument is to determine the mineral composition of the soil the rover has been sampling.

    For over two weeks now, Curiosity has been stationed on a dusty patch of soil NASA has dubbed “Rocknest.” In addition to testing and implementing its soil-sampling abilities, the rover has been using its other on-board tools to survey the surrounding area. It is taking photos of the landscape using its Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) and Mast Camera (Mastcam), while also monitoring Martian environmental conditions with its Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD), Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS), and Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instruments.

    The photo above shows the result of 30 laser blasts Curiosity fired into a nearby drift of Martian sand (named “Crestaurum” by NASA) over the weekend. It then used its spectrometers to examine the chemical elements present in the drift. The rover fired its laser over a distance of 8 feet, 10 inches and the pit created is about one-eighth of an inch across.

    (Photo courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP/LPGN/CNRS)

  • Mars Rover Curiosity’s Third Scoop Being Analyzed

    Earlier this week, NASA announced that Mars rover Curiosity had taken its third scoop of Martian soil. Based on a previously announced plan, the third scoop was to be the first sample analyzed by Curiosity’s on-board equipment.

    Today NASA announced that a sample of Martian soil has successfully been placed into the rover’s Chemistry and Minerology (CheMin) instrument and is being analyzed. The instrument is now determining the mineral composition of the sample.

    “We are crossing a significant threshold for this mission by using CheMin on its first sample,” said John Grotzinger, Curiosity project scientist. “This instrument gives us a more definitive mineral-identifying method than ever before used on Mars: X-ray diffraction. Confidently identifying minerals is important because minerals record the environmental conditions under which they form.”

    NASA stated that the sample placed in the CheMin instrument was a sieved portion of the total sample and consisted of about as much material as a baby aspirin.

    Curiosity has been stationed for over two weeks on a patch of dusty Martian soil NASA dubbed “Rocknest.” During that time, the rover vibrated two scoops of soil to scrub the internal surfaces of its sample processing chambers of any residual Earth particles. This cleaning method will be repeated before a future sample is placed in the rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, which will determine its chemical composition.

    The soil sampling was delayed last week when a bright piece of material was spotted in a photo of the rover’s first scoop. The material was later determined by researchers to be a small bit of plastic that was possibly jarred loose from the Mars lander during its landing sequence. On subsequent scoops different small, bright particles were spotted and determined to be native Martian material.

    “We plan to learn more both about the spacecraft material and about the smaller, bright particles,” said Richard Cook, Curiosity project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We will finish determining whether the spacecraft material warrants concern during future operations. The native Mars particles become fodder for the mission’s scientific studies.”

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Takes a Third Scoop of Martian Soil

    NASA has announced that Mars rover Curiosity will take its third scoop of Martian soil sometime today. While this may be the third scoop for the rover, it’s the first one that will be placed into its on-board equipment for analysis.

    Last week, Curiosity took its first scoop from the “Rocknest” site, where it has been for over a week. It then began to shake the soil to scrub the internal surfaces of its sample-processing chamber of any residual particles from Earth. The sampling process was interrupted briefly by the spotting of a small, bright object that researchers at the time assessed as a piece of plastic debris from the Martian lander that was jostled loose during landing.

    Over the weekend, Curiosity took a second scoop and repeated the shaking process. However, the second scoop also found more bright material, some of which is embedded in the Martian soil. The new assessment holds that the particles are native to Mars, and the Curiosity team will take a third scoop for testing.

    The plan for this third scoop is to place a portion of the sample into Curiosity’s observation tray, and another portion into its chemistry and mineralogy (CheMin) instrument to determine its mineral composition composition. In the near future, a fourth scoop will be placed into the rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument to determine its chemical composition. Meanwhile, Curiosity’s other instruments will be more closely investigating the bright particles.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

  • Curiosity Beams Back First Color Panorama of Mars

    Well, this is cool.

    Earlier in the week, NASA promised us bigger, color photos from the surface of Mars. And what do you know, mark them good on their word. That’s because the Curiosity rover has just sent the first color panaroma image from Gale Crater.

    Ok, it’s not in full resolution, but instead pieced together from 130 different 144×144 pixel images. Still, who’s complaining? Look, it’s MARS! (Click to enlarge)

    Mars Color Panorama

    NASA’s seems pretty thrilled about Curiosity getting out there and sampling the different materials that make up Mars’ surface:

    Scientists will be taking a closer look at several splotches in the foreground that appear gray. These areas show the effects of the descent stage’s rocket engines blasting the ground. What appeared as a dark strip of dunes in previous, black-and-white pictures from Curiosity can also be seen along the top of this mosaic, but the color images also reveal additional shades of reddish brown around the dunes, likely indicating different textures or materials.

    According to JPL, we can expect to get selected full frames from this panorama, which measure 1,200×1,200 pixels each, in due time.

  • Curiosity Rover Gives Us First 3D Images From Mars

    Early monday morning, while much of the east coast was asleep, NASA landed the most technologically advanced mars rover ever, the Curiosity, on the surface of the Red Planet.

    And ever since, we’ve been treated to photos and videos from the rover’s descent, as well as its landing spot – inside the Gale Crater. At first, the images came in with low resolution, and in black and white. Eventually, we got out first high-res shot of the Martian surface. NASA promised that the Curiosity rover would start sending back bigger, color photos as soon as the rover got its front cameras up and running.

    Soon, we saw the first color photo from Curiosity – showing the red, dust-strewn surface of Mars with a view of the rim of the Gale Crater in the distance. It was taken using the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), the camera located on the end of Curiosity’s robotic arm.

    Now, Curiosity has beamed back our first 3D images from both the front and the back of rover.

    “This image is a 3-D view in front of NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT). The anaglyph was made from a stereo pair of Hazard-Avoidance Cameras on the front of the rover. The image is cropped but part of Mount Sharp, a peak that is about 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) high, is still visible rising above the terrain,” says NASA.

    Mars rover 3d photo

    And from the rear…

    “Part of the rim of Gale Crater, which is a feature the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, stretches from the top middle to the top right of the image. One of the rover’s wheels can be seen at bottom right. The bright spot is saturation from the sun,” says NASA.

    curiosity rover 3d image

    Like all you space nerds out there, we’ll be waiting anxiously for more images to arrive from the surface of Mars.