This is, without a doubt, the best photo of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity. Taken on a Martian flat spot called John Klein, the image was just published by scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It looks she asked someone passing by to take her camera and shoot the picture. More »
NASA’s Curiosity rover, which is currently putzing its way around Mars, has just drilled its way into Martian soil for the first time, making a perfectly cylindrical hole on the surface of the Red Planet. The hole is approximately 0.8-inches deep and about 0.6-inches across. From the photo below, the hole looks much bigger, but it seems NASA only need just a slight sample of the planet’s dirt.
The operation, which NASA calls the “mini drill test,” is just the prequel to a full drilling that NASA will conduct sometime soon. If the drill shavings around the fresh hole pass visual evaluation by the rover’s testing mechanisms, the rover team plans to proceed with the first full drilling in a couple of days.
The mini drill test was performed on a patch of flat rock called “John Klein,” which is the same patch of land that other tests were run, including percussion-only testing and planned sample-collection drilling. The rover team plans to use Curiosity’s laboratory instruments to analyze soil samples and learn about the environmental history, including whether or not life was present at any point in time.
Curiosity has been sitting in an area named Yellowknife Bay for a few weeks now, where it has also discovered that rocks in the area were at one time repeatedly flooded by water sometime in the past. NASA is being extremely careful and going very slowly with their experiments, and they say that full-drilling operations will be the most complex sequence the rover has yet to perform on Mars. Good luck, padawan!
Curiosity rover bores into Mars for the first time is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
NASA’s Curiosity rover is about to tap the rocky veins of Mars, which might yield clues to the Red Planet’s watery past. More »
It’s time to check in with our old buddy Curiosity as it makes its way across the surface of Mars. NASA announced today that the rover may have found its first rock sample, which could provide clues about whether or not the planet could have at one time supported microbial life. We’re not sure yet if Curiosity will drill into this rock to pull out a sample – first it needs to make its way over to the rock to have a closer look.
At the moment, though, things look pretty promising. NASA says the rock has a number of features that are of interest, which include “veins, nodules, cross-bedded layering, a lustrous pebble embedded in sandstone, and possibly some holes in the ground.” These could all be evidence of water, so it’s no wonder Curiosity’s engineers have decided it could potentially make a good candidate for sampling.
If it’s determined that the rock is something we want to know more about, Curiosity will use its drill to collect a sample. It will analyze the sample to find out its mineral and chemical composition, which should hopefully give us more information about the planet’s history. “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,” Mars Science Laboratory project manager Richard Cook from NASA JPL said, adding that the team won’t be surprised if a couple of things don’t go exactly as planned while Curiosity is collecting its samples.
If everything plays out the way NASA is hoping, then we should hear that Curiosity has found its first drilling target in just a few days. After that, it shouldn’t be too long before we find out about the rock’s composition, but don’t expect NASA to share the data it finds right away – after all, the agency likes to make sure that it has everything right before it makes any kind of announcement. Keep it tuned here to SlashGear, and we’ll let you know if NASA shares any new information.
[via NASA]
Curiosity’s first rock sample target may have been found is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
If you thought Mars was red, think again. When Curiosity gave the planet a New Year’s clean, she removed some of the red dust which covers the surface of the planet—and what lurks beneath is white. More »
“Snakes on a Planet?” asks the Mars Curiosity Rover to herself, “no, but this sinuous rock formation I spotted on Mars looks like one.” WHATEVER, Mars Curiosity Rover! I’ve had enough of your lies! More »
Considering how far away Mars rover Curiosity is – and how busy it is chewing through rock samples – we’re guessing the exploring robot had a little help from NASA putting together its New Year greeting for Times Square last night. Teased in the final hours of 2012, the clip was beamed up to the huge Toshiba screens above the crowds as part of the tech company’s official sponsorship of the New Year celebrations.
The video itself is pretty cheesy, and we’d have loved to have seen more of the red planet and less of the WordArt. Still, it probably fit the mood on the night; new year revelry is not really the best time or place for announcements of new Martian discoveries.
Those discoveries could well increase in number as Curiosity heads into its first full year on Mars. The rover’s new year resolution is to climb Mount Sharp, a three mile high peak at the center of the crater Curiosity landed in, on a hunt for new evidence that the planet might have once supported microbial life.
That journey will take nine months, the Jet Propulsion Lab team responsible for the Curiosity project at NASA says, with frequent stops along the way to take samples and do other testing. There’ll also be a pause for new software to be installed before Curiosity begins its slow trundle.
Here’s Curiosity’s New Year message from Mars is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
It’s New Years. Balls will be dropped. Kisses will be kissed. Bubbly will be drunk drank drunken dranked consumed. But that’s all normal. This year there’s something different: a message from Mars, apparently. More »
NASA’s Curiosity rover has already reached a few milestones, including being the first ever to check in using Foursquare on another planet. Tonight, however, the Mars rover will make an appearance at tonight’s New Year’s celebrations in New York City’s Time Square, where millions will watch the ball drop. The rover is planning to deliver a “special message” on the big screens.
Curiosity announced the news via her Twitter account, where she tells her followers to “look for a special message from Mars on the giant Toshiba screens” in Times Square in New York City. Sadly, that’s all the information that we were given, other than it’ll be a “video greeting” and if you can’t make it to NYC for New Year’s, the rover will tweet the greeting later today anyway.
We’re not sure exactly what Curiosity has up her sleeve for tonight. It could be a live stream of Mars or just a quick pre-recorded video of the rover prancing around on the Red Planet. It would be awesome if NASA used the opportunity to announce a new discovery of the planet, but we’re guessing that the “special message” will merely just be a cheesy greeting from the rover.
The Toshiba big screens in Times Square will display the official New Year’s Eve countdown, since they’re the exclusive sponsor for the Official Countdown of the Times Square 2013 New Year’s Eve Celebration, and the company estimates that more than one billion people around the world will be tuning into the broadcast this evening.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover will deliver a “special message” in Times Square tonight is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
NASA’s Curiosity rover has set mountain climbing as its New Year’s Resolution, with the intrepid space explorer headed up a Martian peak for its 2013 challenge. The nine-month trek – punctuated with pitstops for drilling and sample analysis – will see Curiosity clamber up the 3 mile high Mount Sharp at the center of the Gale Crater it landed near, further hunting evidence that the red planet might once have supported microbial life. Before that, however, Curiosity couldn’t resist snapping another self-portrait – with the mountain clearly visible in the background.
Originally, the Mount Sharp expedition was expected to have begun before 2012 is through; however, mission chief scientist John Grotzinger told the AP, delays were introduced in the latter half of the year. At full speed, the rover is capable of around 90 meters per hour, though a more typical rate is a third of that.
Under automatic navigation, that pace drops again to more like 200m per day, given the challenges of roaming the foreign terrain. However, NASA is likely to manually drive Curiosity to make effective use of time, as well as to help refine the systems. A software update is already planned before the mountain trek starts in mid-February.
Ahead of the climb, Curiosity will spend a month or so hunting the so-called “perfect” rock to take samples from, a lengthy process of selection, core extraction, and testing in its bank of onboard labs. Grotzinger, a geologist, has said the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in charge of the rover project has “promised everybody that we’re going to go slowly” despite the eagerness to tackle Mount Sharp.
Curiosity identified water, chlorine, sulfur, and other chemicals in recent tests, as well as other evidence that water had flowed on the Martian surface at one point in time. Next up on the checklist are the sort of chemicals that would be required for microbes to flourish, and which the JPL team believe are likely to be in the multiple strata of the mountain, assuming they’re present at all.
As for the self-portrait, the image is in fact made up of more than fifty smaller shots, taken by Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager on the end of the primary robotic arm. By panning the arm around the body of the rover, Curiosity could fire off enough images – over the course of a day – that the JPL team could stitch together into a panoramic shot, a process explained in the video below.
Curiosity plays peekaboo: New self-shot before 9-month mountain climb is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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