[meteorite-list] Curiosity Rover Arm Delivers Rock Powder Sample

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2015 14:31:19 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201503122131.t2CLVJ25025017_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4509

Rover Arm Delivers Rock Powder Sample
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
March 12, 2015

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its robotic arm Wednesday, March 11,
to sieve and deliver a rock-powder sample to an onboard instrument. The
sample was collected last month before the team temporarily suspended
rover arm movement pending analysis of a short circuit.

The Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) analytical instrument inside the
rover received the sample powder. This sample comes from a rock target
called "Telegraph Peak," the third target drilled during about six months
of investigating the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop on Mount Sharp. With this
delivery completed, the rover team plans to drive Curiosity away from
Pahrump Hills in coming days.

"That precious Telegraph Peak sample had been sitting in the arm, so tantalizingly
close, for two weeks. We are really excited to get it delivered for analysis,"
said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

The rover experienced a short circuit on Feb. 27 while using percussion
action in its drill to shake sample powder from the drill into a sample-processing
device on the arm. Subsequent testing at JPL and on Curiosity has identified
the likely cause as a transient short in the motor for the drill's percussion
action. During several tests on the rover in the past 10 days, the short
was reproduced only one time -- on March 5. It lasted less than one one-hundredth
of a second and did not stop the motor. Ongoing analysis will help the
rover team develop guidelines for best use of the drill at future rock
targets.

The rover's path toward higher layers of Mount Sharp will take it first
through a valley called "Artist's Drive," heading southwestward from Pahrump
Hills. The sample-processing device on the arm is carrying Telegraph Peak
sample material at the start of the drive, for later delivery into the
Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of instruments. The delivery will
occur after SAM prepares for receiving the sample.

Curiosity's drill has used a combination of rotary and percussion action
to collect samples from six rock targets since the rover landed inside
Gale Crater in 2012. The first sampled rock, "John Klein," in the Yellowknife
Bay area near the landing site, provided evidence for meeting the mission's
primary science goal. Analysis of that sample showed that early Mars offered
environmental conditions favorable for microbial life, including the key
elemental ingredients for life and a chemical energy source such as used
by some microbes on Earth. In the layers of lower Mount Sharp, the mission
is pursuing evidence about how early Mars environments evolved from wetter
to drier conditions.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
manages the Mars Science Laboratory project for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate, Washington, and built the project's Curiosity rover. For
more information about Curiosity, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/msl

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:

http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity

http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity


Media Contact

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

2015-087
Received on Thu 12 Mar 2015 05:31:19 PM PDT