Drilling about to begin on Mars

The Mars team at NASA have selected the first rock for drilling using the Curiosity rover, in their search for evidence of water on the planet. It was selected after a visual survey by the Mastcam which revealed a series of unexpected features which are different from those at the rover landing site. The rock, which has been named John Klein after a former Mars Science Laboratory deputy project manager who died in 2011, has different wet environment characteristics to the landing site which could yield information about the wet history of the planet. There are a series of veins running through the features in the neighbouring area, along with other features that are characteristic of the past presence of water.

Drilling will begin in a few days once Curiosity has travelled the remaining few yards to the target area. The rover will drill the rock several times to produce powdered rock to clean the drill of any potential contaminants that have travelled all the way from Earth. Once clean, newly drilled samples will be taken and examined by the CheMin and SAM analytical components. CheMin holds an X-ray diffraction and fluorescence instrument and SAM carried a gas chromatograph, mass spectrometer and a tunable laser spectrometer.