NASA rover team to drill for clues about Mars
Scientists to drill into the red planet. Credit: NASA.
The slab of sandstone has been dubbed "Windjana," after a gorge in Western Australia. The rover used a wire-bristle brush to clear away dust from a patch on the rock recently.
"In the brushed spot, we can see that the rock is fine-grained, its true color is much grayer than the surface dust, and some portions of the rock are harder than others, creating the interesting bumpy textures," said Curiosity science team member Melissa Rice of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "All of these traits reinforce our interest in drilling here in order understand the chemistry of the fluids that bound these grains together to form the rock."
Before Curiosity drills deep enough for collection of a rock-powder sample, it will do a preparatory "mini-drill" operation on the target, as a further check for readiness. Curiosity's hammering drill collects powdered material from the interior of a rock, and the rover delivers portions of the sample to laboratory instruments on board.
This will be the third drilling to collect a sample for analysis. The first two Martian rocks drilled and analyzed were mudstone slabs neighboring each other in Yellowknife Bay, about 2.5 miles northeast of the rover's current location. Those two rocks yielded evidence of an ancient lakebed environment with key chemical elements and a chemical energy source that provided conditions favorable for microbial life billions of yeas ago.
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