[meteorite-list] NASA Mars Rover Preparing to Drill Into First Martian Rock

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2013 11:11:44 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <201301151911.r0FJBi42000249_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-020

NASA Mars Rover Preparing to Drill Into First Martian Rock
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
January 15, 2013

Images:
    * 'John Klein' Site Selected for Curiosity's Drill Debut <#1>
    * Diversity in Vicinity of Curiosity's First Drilling Target <#2>
    * 'Yellowknife Bay' Veins and Concretions <#3>
    * Calcium-Rich Veins in Martian Rocks <#4>
    * Signs of Hydrated Calcium Sulfates in Martian Rocks <#5>
    * Veins in Rocks on Mars and Earth <#6>
    * Texture of 'Gillespie Lake' Rock <#7>
    * Before and After a Little Dusting <#8>
    * Veins in 'Sheepbed' Outcrop <#9>
    * Spherules in 'Yellowknife Bay' <#10>
    * 'Shaler' Unit's Evidence of Stream Flow <#11>
    * Curiosity's Traverse into Different Terrain <#12>

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 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 Plan?tologie et G?odynamique 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, a division of Caltech, 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.jpl.nasa.gov/msl , http://www.nasa.gov/msl and
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl . Follow the mission on Facebook and
Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and
http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

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

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

2013-20
Received on Tue 15 Jan 2013 02:11:44 PM PST