NASA Mars Rover Preparing to Drill Into First Martian Rock

Jan. 15, 2013

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6278
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov




RELEASE: 13-022

NASA MARS ROVER PREPARING TO DRILL INTO FIRST MARTIAN ROCK

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is driving toward a
flat rock with pale veins that may hold clues to a wet history on the
Red Planet. If the rock meets rover engineers' approval when
Curiosity rolls up to it in coming days, it will become the first to
be drilled for a sample during the Mars Science Laboratory mission.

The size of a car, Curiosity is inside Mars' Gale Crater investigating
whether the planet ever offered an environment favorable for
microbial life. Curiosity landed in the crater five months ago to
begin its two-year prime mission.

"Drilling into a rock to collect a sample will be this mission's most
challenging activity since the landing. It has never been done on
Mars," said Mars Science Laboratory project manager Richard Cook of
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "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."

Curiosity first will gather powdered samples from inside the rock and
use those to scrub the drill. Then the rover will drill and ingest
more samples from this rock, which it will analyze for information
about its mineral and chemical composition.

The chosen rock is in an area where Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam)
and other cameras have revealed diverse unexpected features,
including veins, nodules, cross-bedded layering, a lustrous pebble
embedded in sandstone, and possibly some holes in the ground.
The rock chosen for drilling is called "John Klein" in tribute to
former Mars Science Laboratory deputy project manager John W. Klein,
who died in 2011.

"John's leadership skill played a crucial role in making Curiosity a
reality," said Cook.

The target is on flat-lying bedrock within a shallow depression called
"Yellowknife Bay." The terrain in this area differs from that of the
landing site, a dry streambed about a third of a mile (about 500
meters) to the west. Curiosity's science team decided to look there
for a first drilling target because orbital observations showed
fractured ground that cools more slowly each night than nearby
terrain types do.

"The orbital signal drew us here, but what we found when we arrived
has been a great surprise," said Mars Science Laboratory project
scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology
in Pasadena. "This area had a different type of wet environment than
the streambed where we landed, maybe a few different types of wet
environments."

One line of evidence comes from inspection of light-toned veins with
Curiosity's laser-pulsing Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument,
which found elevated levels of calcium, sulfur and hydrogen.

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

Researchers have used the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to
examine sedimentary rocks in the area. Some are sandstone, with
grains up to about peppercorn size. One grain has an interesting
gleam and bud-like shape that have brought it Internet buzz as a
"Martian flower." Other rocks nearby are siltstone, with grains finer
than powdered sugar. These differ significantly from pebbly
conglomerate rocks in the landing area.

"All of these are sedimentary rocks, telling us Mars had environments
actively depositing material here," said MAHLI deputy principal
investigator Aileen Yingst of the Planetary Science Institute in
Tucson, Ariz. "The different grain sizes tell us about different
transport conditions."

JPL manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science
Mission Directorate in Washington.
To see an image of the rock, visit:

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16567

For more information about the mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/msl

Follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:

http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity


and


http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity


-end-



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