NASA - NASA Mars Rover Preparing to Drill Into First Martian Rock

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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 wiGale Craterth 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

http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity

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MARS: Mars Science Laboratory, the Next Mars Rover

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 NASA Oct. 30 Telecon About Mars Curiosity Progress

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA will host a media teleconference at 11:30 a.m. PDT (2:30 p.m. EDT) on Tuesday, Oct. 30, to provide an update about the Curiosity rover's mission to Mars' Gale Crater.

The Mars Science Laboratory Project and its Curiosity rover are almost three months into a two-year prime mission to investigate whether conditions may have been favorable for microbial life.

Audio and visuals of the event will be streamed live online at: 

http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio 

and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl .

Visuals will be available at the start of the event at:

 http://go.nasa.gov/curiositytelecon .

For information about NASA's Curiosity mission, 

visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mars and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl .

Curiosity - Robot Geologist and Chemist in One!

This artist's concept features NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life.

Curiosity landed near the Martian equator about 10:31 p.m., Aug. 5 PDT (1:31 a.m. Aug. 6 EDT).

In this picture, the rover examines a rock on Mars with a set of tools at the end of the rover's arm, which extends about 7 feet (2 meters). Two instruments on the arm can study rocks up close. A drill can collect sample material from inside of rocks and a scoop can pick up samples of soil. The arm can sieve the samples and deliver fine powder to instruments inside the rover for thorough analysis.

The mast, or rover's "head," rises to about 6.9 feet (2.1 meters) above ground level, about as tall as a basketball player. This mast supports two remote-sensing science instruments: the Mast Camera, or "eyes," for stereo color viewing of surrounding terrain and material collected by the arm; and, the Chemistry and Camera instrument, which uses a laser to vaporize a speck of material on rocks up to about 23 feet (7 meters) away and determines what elements the rocks are made of.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

For more information about Curiosity is at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Curiosity Rover Collects Fourth Scoop of Martian Soil

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shook a scoopful of dusty sand inside its sample-handling mechanism on Sol 75 (Oct. 21, 2012) as the third scrubbing of interior surfaces of the mechanism. The rover team is instructing the rover to deliver a sieved sample from this scoopful -- the mission's fourth -- onto Curiosity's observation tray on Oct. 22 and plans to analyze another sample from the same scoopful with the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument this week.

Curiosity collected this fourth scoop of soil on Sol 74 (Oct. 20). A later scoop will become the first delivered to the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument. While continuing with scooping activities at the "Rocknest" site, the rover also has been examining surroundings with the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) and Mast Camera (Mastcam) instruments, and monitoring environmental conditions with the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD), Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) and Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instruments of its science payload.

Sol 75, in Mars local mean solar time at Gale Crater, ended at 8:58 a.m. Oct. 22, PDT (11:58 a.m., EDT).

Laser Hit on Martian Sand Target, Before and After

The Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity used its laser and spectrometers to examine what chemical elements are in a drift of Martian sand during the mission's 74th Martian day, or sol (Oct. 20, 2012).

This pair of images from ChemCam's remote micro-imager shows the target, called "Crestaurum," before and after it was zapped 30 times by the instrument's laser. The dark pit created by the repeated laser hits is about one-eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) across. Crestaurum is within the "Rocknest" patch of windblown dust and sand. It was selected as a target surfaced with fine-grain sand. The distance to the target from the ChemCam instrument at the top of Curiosity's mast was 8 feet and 10 inches (2.7 meters).
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP/LPGN/CNRS

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Bright Particle in Hole Dug by Scooping of Martian Soil

This image shows part of the small pit or bite created when NASA's Mars rover Curiosity collected its second scoop of Martian soil at a sandy patch called "Rocknest." The bright particle near the center of this image, and similar ones elsewhere in the pit, prompted concern because a small, light-toned shred of debris from the spacecraft had been observed previously nearby (PIA16230). However, the mission's science team assessed the bright particles in this scooped pit to be native Martian material rather than spacecraft debris.

This image was taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on Curiosity's arm during the 69th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Oct. 15, 2012), about a week after the scoop dug this hole. The view here covers an area of ground about 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) across.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

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First Sample Placed on Curiosity's Observation Tray

The robotic arm on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity delivered a sample of Martian soil to the rover's observation tray for the first time during the mission's 70th Martian day, or sol (Oct. 16, 2012). This image taken later that same sol by the rover's left Mast Camera shows how wind or vibration or both affected the sample after delivery, moving much of it off the tray to the left in this view.

The sample came from the third scoopful of material collected at the "Rocknest" patch of windblown dust and sand.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

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Curiosity's First Three Bites Into Martian Ground

Three bite marks left in the Martian ground by the scoop on the robotic arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity are visible in this image taken by the rover's right Navigation Camera during the mission's 69th Martian day, or sol (Oct. 15, 2012). The third scoopful, collected on that sol, left the bite or pit farthest to the right. Each of the three bites is about 2 inches (5 centimeters) wide.

Of the two bites to the left, the lower one is where Curiosity collected its first scoopful of Martian material, on Sol 61 (Oct. 7, 2012). The upper one is the site of the second scooping, on Sol 66 (Oct. 12, 2012). The location for all of these scoops, and two more planned, is a ripple of windblown dust and sand at a location called "Rocknest."

The bright circular part of the rover near the bottom center of this image is the observation tray, which is 3 inches (7.8 centimeters) in diameter.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Astronomía: El equipo del vehículo explorador de Marte intenta aterrizar más cerca de su objetivo científico

Hola amigos: AL VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., Esta imagen muestra los cambios en las zonas tomadas como objetivo de aterrizaje de Curiosity, el vehículo explorador del proyecto del Laboratorio Científico de Marte, de la NASA. Crédito de la imagen: NASA/JPL–Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS 

El equipo del vehículo explorador de Marte intenta aterrizar más cerca de su objetivo científico

15 de junio de 2012:  La NASA ha estrechado la posible zona de aterrizaje del explorador de Marte más avanzado hasta la fecha, Curiosity (Curiosidad, en idioma español), el cual llegará al Planeta Rojo en agosto. El vehículo, que tiene el tamaño de un automóvil, aterrizará más cerca de su objetivo final para llevar a cabo operaciones científicas, pero también se ubicará más cerca del pie de una cuesta montañosa que representa un peligro para el aterrizaje.

"Estamos recortando casi a la mitad la distancia que tendremos que recorrer después del aterrizaje", dijo Pete Theisinger, quien es el administrador del proyecto para el Laboratorio Científico de Marte (Mars Science Laboratory, en idioma inglés), en el Laboratorio de Propulsión a Chorro (Jet Propulsion Laboratory o JPL, por su sigla en idioma inglés), de la NASA. "Esto podría permitirnos llegar a la montaña meses antes de lo previsto".

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Fue posible ajustar los planes de aterrizaje gracias a la confianza que se tiene en la precisión de la tecnología de aterrizaje ubicada a bordo de la nave espacial denominada Laboratorio Científico de Marte, la cual transporta al explorador Curiosity. La nave espacial puede apuntar a un sitio más cercano del Monte Sharp, ubicado en el centro del cráter Gale, sin impactarse contra el mismo. Las capas de roca de esa montaña constituyen el lugar más importante para llevar a cabo investigaciones con el explorador.

Se ha programado a Curiosity para que aterrice aproximadamente a las 10:31 de la noche, hora del Pacífico, del 5 de agosto (1:31 de la madrugada, hora del Este, del 6 de agosto). Después de las revisiones de rutina, Curiosity comenzará un estudio de dos años sobre la posibilidad de que la vecindad de la zona de aterrizaje haya podido, en algún momento del pasado, ofrecer un ambiente favorable para la vida microbiana.

Theisinger y otros líderes de la misión describieron el ajuste del objetivo a los periodistas que estuvieron presentes en una conferencia, llevada a cabo el lunes 11 de junio, en la cual se discutieron los preparativos para el aterrizaje y las operaciones de Curiosity en Marte.

El objetivo de aterrizaje era anteriormente una elipse de unos 20 kilómetros (12 millas) de ancho y 25 kilómetros (16 millas) de largo. El continuo análisis de las capacidades del nuevo sistema de aterrizaje ha permitido a los planificadores de la misión reducir el área a una zona de aproximadamente 7 kilómetros (4 millas) de ancho por 20 kilómetros (12 millas) de largo, suponiendo que las predicciones sobre el viento y otras condiciones atmosféricas sean correctas.

Concepto artístico de Curiosity trabajando en la superficie de Marte. [Más información]

Incluso con una elipse de aterrizaje más pequeña, Curiosity podrá posarse a una distancia segura de las pendientes escarpadas que se encuentran en las cercanías del.

"Llevamos años preparándonos para un aterrizaje exitoso de Curiosity, y todos los indicadores son buenos", dijo Dave Lavery, quien es el ejecutivo del programa del Laboratorio Científico de Marte, de la NASA. "Sin embargo, aterrizar en Marte siempre tiene sus riesgos, de manera que el éxito no está garantizado. Una vez que estemos en el suelo, procederemos con mucho cuidado. Contamos con mucho tiempo, ya que Curiosity no tiene una vida tan limitada como las misiones anteriores, que eran de aproximadamente 90 días, como la de los Vehículos Exploradores de Marte (Mars Exploration Rovers, en idioma inglés) y el explorador Phoenix, ambos de la NASA."

Curiosity se encontrará bien acompañado conforme se aproxime al aterrizaje. Dos orbitadores marcianos de la NASA, así como un orbitador de la Agencia Espacial Europea, se encontrarán en posición para recibir las transmisiones de radio durante el descenso del Laboratorio Científico de Marte a través de la atmósfera del Planeta Rojo.

Para obtener más información sobre la misión del Laboratorio Científico de Marte/Curiosity, visite: http://www.nasa.gov/msl.

Créditos y Contactos
Funcionaria Responsable de NASA: Ruth Netting Editor de Producción: Dr. Tony Phillips	Traducción al Español: Juan C. Toledo Editora en Español: Angela Atadía de Borghetti Formato: Juan C. Toledo

Más información

La misión está administrada por el Laboratorio de Propulsión a Chorro (JPL, por su sigla en idioma inglés) para el Directorio de Misiones Científicas de la NASA, ubicado en Washington. Curiosity fue diseñado, desarrollado y ensamblado en el JPL. Caltech administra el JPL para la NASA.

Siga la misión en Facebook y en Twitter:
http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity
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Desde que la nave espacial denominada Laboratorio Científico de Marte fue lanzada en noviembre de 2011, los ingenieros han continuado realizando pruebas y mejorando el software de aterrizaje. El Laboratorio Científico de Marte utilizará una versión mejorada del software de vuelo, la cual fue instalada en sus computadoras durante las dos últimas semanas. Se enviarán también al vehículo explorador actualizaciones adicionales para las operaciones en la superficie de Marte aproximadamente una semana después del aterrizaje.

Los preparativos también incluyen otras actualizaciones del software del vehículo explorador y un intento de comprender el efecto que tendrán los escombros que provienen del taladro que el vehículo explorador usará para recolectar muestras de rocas marcianas. Los experimentos llevados a cabo en el JPL indican que el Teflón del taladro podría mezclarse con las muestras polvorientas. Se continuará haciendo pruebas con copias del taladro incluso después del aterrizaje. El explorador transportará las muestras a los instrumentos que se encuentran a bordo, los cuales son capaces de identificar componentes minerales y químicos.

"El material que proviene del taladro podría hacer más difícil las cosas, aunque no imposibilitará el análisis del contenido de carbono de las rocas por parte de uno de los 10 instrumentos del explorador. Hay formas de evadir el problema", dijo John Grotzinger, quien es el científico del proyecto en el Instituto de Tecnología de California, en Pasadena, California. "La existencia de compuestos orgánicos a base de carbono es un requisito para la vida. Sabemos que los meteoritos pueden depositar carbono orgánico de origen no–biológico en Marte, pero desconocemos si persiste cerca de la superficie. Estaremos investigando esto y otros indicios químicos y minerales relacionados con la habitabilidad".

Revised Landing Target for Mars Rover Curiosity

This image shows changes in the target landing area for Curiosity, the rover of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory project. The larger ellipse was the target area prior to early June 2012, when the project revised it to the smaller ellipse centered nearer to the foot of Mount Sharp, inside Gale Crater.

This oblique view of Mount Sharp is derived from a combination of elevation and imaging data from three Mars orbiters. The view is looking toward the southeast.

The larger ellipse, 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) by 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) was already smaller than the landing target area for any previous Mars mission, due to this mission's techniques for improved landing precision. Continuing analysis after the Nov. 26, 2011, launch resulted in confidence in landing within an even smaller area, about 12 miles by 4 miles (20 by 7 kilometers). Using the smaller ellipse, the Mars Science Laboratory Project also moved the center of the target closer to the mountain, which holds geological layers that are the prime destination for the rover. Landing will be the evening of Aug. 5, 2012, Pacific Standard Time (early Aug. 6 Universal Time and Eastern Time).

The image combines elevation data from the High Resolution Stereo Camera on the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter, image data from the Context Camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and color information from Viking Orbiter imagery. There is no vertical exaggeration in the image.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS

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