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NASA / JPL-Caltech
A self-portrait shows the deck of NASA's Curiosity rover, as seen by the rover's navigation camera. The rim of Gale Crater is visible in the far background. This distorted mosaic does not show the camera mast on which the Navcam system is mounted.
NASA's Curiosity rover hasn't rolled its wheels on Mars yet, but scientists have already figured out what the rover will be doing and where it'll be going through the end of the year.
On Saturday night, Curiosity is due to use its laser blaster for the first time, taking 30 shots at a poor little rock known as N165. In the coming days, the rover also will analyze the rocks that have been exposed at a blast mark known as Goulburn Scour, which was left behind by Curiosity's rocket-powered sky-crane descent stage during the Aug. 5 landing. And it will take its first test drive, going about 10 feet (3 meters) to limber up for its first long-distance journey.
Over the course of a month or two, the six-wheeled, nuclear-powered rover will make a trek to a spot that's been nicknamed Glenelg, about a quarter-mile (400 meters) east of the landing site, project scientist John Grotzinger told reporters during a teleconference today.
"With such a great landing spot in Gale Crater, we literally had every degree of the compass to choose from for our first drive," Grotzinger explained in a news release. "We had a bunch of strong contenders. It is the kind of dilemma planetary scientists dream of, but you can only go one place for the first drilling for a rock sample on Mars. That first drilling will be a huge moment in the history of Mars exploration."
Glenelg is the spot where three types of geological formations come together. Heading to Glenelg means the rover will have to retrace its route to move on to its prime target, a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain known as Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp. But Grotzinger and his colleagues think the scientific payoff will be worth it.
Grotzinger told reporters that Glenelg, a Gaelic-derived place name that describes a rock formation in northern Canada, was particularly apt for the Martian site because it's a palindrome, spelled the same way forward and backward. Similarly, Curiosity will have to double back toward its landing site after visiting Glenelg on Mars. "We get it coming and going," he said.
After Glenelg, Curiosity will head toward Mount Sharp. It could be the end of the calendar year before the mountain trek begins in earnest, and Grotzinger has previously estimated that getting to Curiosity's first major target amid the mesas and buttes at the base of Mount Sharp might require a full Earth year. Curiosity's $2.5 billion primary mission is due to last almost two Earth years, or one complete year on Mars. However, most team members expect the rover to last far longer.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
A photo from the Curiosity rover's Mastcam imaging system shows rover hardware in the foreground and highlights the location of a rock known as N165, which is the first target for the ChemCam laser zapper.
'Target practice' for laser zapper
The mission's purpose is to analyze Martian rock and soil to determine whether the planet's chemistry could have supported life in Mars' ancient past, when the planet was wetter and warmer than it is today. The car-sized, 1-ton Curiosity rover has 10 scientific instruments to do the job — including its ChemCam imaging system, which incorporates a laser powerful enough to vaporize tiny spots of rock.
N165, a 3-inch-wide (7.5-centimeter-wide) rock sitting on the ground about 10 feet (3 meters) from the rover, would be the first target for the laser zapper, said Roger Wiens, a planetary scientist from Los Alamos National Laboratory who is the ChemCam team's prinicipal investigator. About 30 laser blasts would be aimed at the rock over the course of 10 seconds.
"This is sort of target practice, if you will," Wiens said.
Each 14-millijoule laser pulse briefly focuses the energy equivalent of a million light bulbs onto an area the size of a pinhead. The flashes of light given off by the mini-blasts of plasma are captured by ChemCam's imaging system and routed through fiber optics to a spectrometer inside the rover. By checking the spectrum of the light, scientists can figure out the composition of the material vaporized by each zap.
Wiens said he expected N165 to be the kind of garden-variety basalt rock typically found on Mars. He and his colleagues are more interested in finding out whether ChemCam can discriminate between the rock's dusty coating and the minerals beneath the coating. That's why the rock is being blasted so many times in succession. The first results could be revealed early next week, Wiens said.
"Our team has waited eight long years to get to this date," Wiens said.
Instruments coming to life
Grotzinger said the checkouts for all of Curiosity's scientific instruments are going well. Just today, the neutron-generating device known as DAN (Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons) was turned on while another instrument called RAD (Radiation Assessment Detector) monitored the radiation that DAN was giving off, he said.
The rover's weather station, dubbed REMS (Rover Environmental Monitoring Station), is already providing temperature readings: Grotzinger said the high temperature on Mars over the past day was just above freezing (276 Kelvin, which is 37 degrees Fahrenheit or 2.85 degrees Celsius).
"It's been exactly 30 years since the last long-duration-monitoring weather station was present on Mars," he said. "That was when the Viking 1 lander stopped communicating with the earth. That was back in 1982, so 30 years later we're happy to be on the surface doing that monitoring again."
The instrument checkout should be complete "toward the end of next week," Grotzinger said. At one time, he had suggested that the blast marks left behind by the descent stage, just yards away from the rover's landing site, might be a good first target for detailed sampling. But today, Grotzinger said that the exposed bedrock at Goulburn Scour appeared to be a loosely held-together combination of material. "This rock is really not a good one for the first drilling," he said.
So instead, scientists will examine the blast marks with Curiosity's cameras, perhaps including ChemCam, and then most likely move on. The blast marks have been given names that reflect their fiery genesis: Goulburn, Burnside, Hepburn and Sleepy Dragon. "The theme here is heat," Grotzinger said.
The first samples could well be scooped from the Martian surface at some point between the landing site, which is in a quadrant that's been nicknamed Yellowknife, and the Glenelg site, Grotzinger said. Those samples could be ground up and deposited into a couple of onboard chemical laboratories called CheMin and SAM (which stand for "Chemistry and Mineralogy" and "Surface Analysis at Mars," respectively). "That first scooping activity is really important," Grotzinger said.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Ariz.
Imagery from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the area around Curiosity, including the blackened marks of the crash site for its sky-crane descent stage, and the rover's first destination, known as Glenelg.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Ariz.
A wider-angle view from orbit shows the Curiosity landing site, the Glenelg geological site, and the approach to a 3-mile-high mountain known as Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp.
The soil sampling efforts should provide the confidence needed to go ahead with the first rock drilling operation at Glenelg, he said. Once the rover arrives at Glenelg, it's likely to spend at least a month studying the intriguing variations in the site's geology, which could shed light on the changes that shaped 96-mile-wide Gale Crater over the course of eons, Grotzinger said.
"Sometime toward the end of the calendar year ... I would guess then we would turn our sights to the trek toward Mount Sharp," he said.
Mount Sharp is considered prime territory for Curiosity's scientific prospecting because its layers of rock are thought to record billions of years' worth of geological history. Detailed analysis of the rock chemistry could reveal what happened to Mars between the warm, wet environment that's thought to have existed long ago and the cold, dry environment that exists today.
More about Mars:
- Rover reveals more of Martian peak
- Mars rover team faces the masses
- Mars fans make viral video
- Panoramas add spin to Mars
- Mars rover survives its 'brain transplant'
- Mars orbiter gets a long look at Curiosity rover
- Reprogrammed rover getting ready to roll
- Obama tells rover team: Watch out for Martians
- Search for life to shape future Mars missions
- Mars rover getting reprogrammed for science
- Why the rover has such a dinky camera and computer
- How to build your own Mars rover with Lego blocks
- The Puff on Mars: Photo mystery solved!
- Panorama reveals a colorful Mars
- NBC video: Panorama featured on 'Nightly News'
- Curiosity reveals a Martian Mojave
- Tour the Martian Mojave in 3-D
- Flying saucer spotted over Mars
- First 3-D pictures sent by Curiosity
- Orbital photo spots rover and its trash
- Curiosity sends color snapshot from Mars
- Rover video looks down on Mars during landing
- Mars orbiter spots rover in midair
- NASA's Mohawk Guy marvels at his fame
- Curiosity rover scores touchdown on Mars
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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Alan,all I can think of when I look at the pictures is the teaser trailer for the original Transformer movie,I keep looking for the big "shadow" in the picture. Anyway,I hope they "we" find what were looking for.Looking forward to all the pictures & video down the road!
I fail to see how 14 millijoule laser blasts translates to 1 million light bulbs ! Do they mean 100 watt light bulbs? If so their reporting must be totally wrong. 1 watt = 1 joule/sec . 14 millijoules = 14 milliwatts/ sec.
They don't state 100-Watt light bulbs but that's what they probably meant. The light bulb emits in 4 pi geometry, so if you took all of that energy and concentrated it into a tiny cone that's probably how they came up with the million light bulb analogy.
Still it's odd ball reporting. They should get it straight on what they mean. 14 onethousanths of a joule isn't much. Could it fry a fly on the wall?
Yes, for those figures I just put together NASA's stats, but I realize they need some explaining. The key is that the energy is delivered in a very, very short instant of time ... five nanoseconds ... so the total energy output is actually rather small, but very concentrated in those five nanoseconds. It's like the reports about sonoluminescence, in which the brilliance of a bubble burst is equivalent to the energy needed for a fusion reaction, but only for nanoseconds at a time. I'm assuming that the laser burst from ChemCam would vaporize a pinhead-sized chunk of a fly, which would not be very pleasant for the fly.
Now I am curious, just how much of this is being funded by the tax payers/ us gov't.It is all quite interesting, but my question is "how does any of this very expensive"research" pertain to people here on earth, how is it benefitting us, how is it solving any current and seemingly more important problems here on earth?" how about figuring out what to do with all the "HAZARDOUS WASTE" and "WASTE CHEMICALS" produced everyday? I am sure that just the gadgets on the rover produced enough HAZARDOUS WASTE during their manufacturing to poison all the martians on mars
TMI-Too Much Information. Tell us what you find, not what you are planning, just do it. Must be budget time again.
In the research field of "Not Real Science" We wanna see (1# all American) up close picture of "The Face on Mars" Now Damn it! No for real what about that picture! Oh come on its possible just do it!
NASA has already done that. MRO took a high resolution (25 cm/pixel) image of the pareidolic "face" back in 2007.
Curiosity is not on Mars at all, but in a remmote part of the Mojave dessert in California. The billions of dollars supposedly spent by NASA were actually funneled off to pay for highly classified programs.
Thanks for keeping the prices up on my Reynolds stock.
SalMonella, I remember the time I was working in another state and a few of its citizens swore up and down that we didn't send men to the moon but rather they were in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. Are you related to one of them?
Yes yes little tiny fossilized pictures of little tiny fossils in the dirt germ sized fossils right, and smoke from dirt that might contain the elements that might have made life possible water from ice in craters and all that stuff! But hey wheres that picture up close and personal of the face on mars! That's what we really wanna see!
patrick-1963<--- Ur so funny, If there are Martians they will have to die from disease or be put on reservations before we can terraform the planet! Everyone knows that its how we earthlings Roll!
patrick-1963<--- Easy due to research on making things cheaper "Space X" Now makes it easy and cheap to launch HAZARDOUS WASTE into Space! They send it all to Jupiter didn't you know that!
A laser that vaporizes rocks?!?! Hmmmm wonder how many of those are orbiting our earth? Any over Iran?
Just say'n
That would be totally conspicuous! We have the technology to (attach a rocket to an asteroidand hit them with a rock from space "Act of God"Oopsy!) But we will use our earthquake generating technology to keep them from getting to out of control!
Quick fire the damn thing before the EPA and OSHA tape off the area.... and Oh god help us if the rover finds water then it will be a wetland.
How long have you been a member of Supporting The Right To Work In Unsafe Areas Surrounded By A Toxic Environment? You'd be a prime candidate for Chinese citizenship.
ha-ha-ha ,,, oldandtried, you seem to be an environmental professional, or maybe once was. no doubt someone will protest the degradation of the environment for that possible microbe that becomes endangered within the wetland tract. but never fear, these gov't agencies rarely work closely with one another. OSHA and the EPA won't find out about it until next year when the videos are released, and it will take them at least five to build the robot to perform the work of remediation .... but who will launch it into space?
Hey Alan, you can route your thug patrol to mug me again. I just emailed my congressman and ask him to look into why we have one old rover on Mars producing more data in one day than MSL Curiosity has in two and a half weeks.
Go ahead... have your goons call me a troll again because I dare to speak freely on your article.
I assume that it's because there are other necessary operations that must be completed before doing so.
Don't bother replying to him. He's not reading it anyway. He's just a troll trying to get a rise out of people. Click on the exclamation point icon and then click Ignore This Author.
Z, I have so many people on my ignore list that I'm not sure there's room for one more, and to be fair I'll admit that I'm probably on a few hundred ignore lists.
Arx is just trolling, we've answered that question a few times, yet he refuses to listen.
Mitchell
Right, it takes a while for Curiosity to get up to speed.
You're wasting your breath Alan. He'll just make the same comment again later.
global warming and extinctionlevel events <--- really now! Hmmm if we have no other rock to jump on we're screwed! Global Warming is very much part of alarger cycle of the earth that usually ends with an ICE AGE so enjoy the warmth because you cry baby environmentalist will not survive!
This is a typical yellow journalism article by MS-NBC. Rocks don't have emotions of feelings and a laser blast won't hurt it.
It's called science MSNBC, learn it and then get out of the yellow journalism business.
Wow, you have a low tolerance for anthropomorphization ... just having a little fun with the subject. This story about "the Little Rock on Mars," which was written by a friend of mine at Caltech in 1997, must really bug you:
http://www.suekientz.com/little_rock/
the team photo was not what I expected.
I expected a bunch of ties-flat tops-black horn rim glasses(which seem to be making a come back)
and one lazy eye out of a group of four.
I'm on older hippie,what can I say.
They look like my neighbors
I sense the divide between the technos and the "I don't knows" isn't-(not like back in the day)
I like it and feel that people young and older will feel (less dumb) asking questions and taking chances
.
as for reporting "life" on mars .............
if its more than a single cell ................
no comment (and that's an order)
Enjoy the way the moon looks while you can. China will start mining it for iron and helium-3 as soon as they are able to do so. India will be second in line in their search for helium-3.
r u kidding me [puitting that robot on mars then blowing stuff up with a lazer beam. thats just stupid. what if the rock it shoots at screws up the planet and knocks it off balance. humans have no right to screw with a planet ,they screw with this planet enough. all the money it cost to put that rover in space and the cost to build it, is probably a huge amount of money. now you/I understand why we have all these bumper stickers that say 'united we stand' 'we'. isn't us U.S. citezens we is the pigs running our country. the real quote is'united we stand divided we fall.' we r falling. people having problems making ends meet and the pigs spend millions on a robotic weapon on mars. no common sense what so ever. put the money towrds the farmers that have the drought. then we help everyone in the nation but no we'll put a robot and play with it to roam around on mars. brilliant stuff for piggys running our country. it's sick
Dude - You should cut back on the magic mushrooms.
FlareChan seeking for elemental resources that might be rare or non-existant on Earth, that we could use to our advantage, and moving forward to the ideal of eventual human space travel and other planetary colonization.
If thats the case then that only furthers my point of why did we abandon the moon exploration... Vast quantities of Helium-3 could provide an excellent source of raw materials for humanity's nuclear fusion
future. Solar cells could also harvest solar energy and beam it back down to
Earth.And if humans managed to not only establish permanent bases on the moon, but
also harness its energy resources, then the moon becomes a handy stepping-stone
to further missions into the outer solar system. The Moon seems to be the most logical choice right now for exploration...Why not allocate the funds for something that could really benefit Mankind???
One Brittany Spears sent out a lazer beam herself just recently in the form of a Tweet stating she would like Rover to tell her if Mars still looks the same as it did in 2000 (and obvious self referral to her remarkable ability as a mother of two to have recaptured her lovely curves of 12 years ago! Go Brittany!
All this waste of money and resources for the outerspace exploration is stupid and useless. We can not resolve simple problems we face here, on our planet and we adventure out there. Give me one reason the Moon landing was beneficial for the human kind.
TV satellite dishes, medical imaging devices, the in-the-ear thermometer, fire-resistant materials used in firefighting, smoke detectors, sunglasses, cordless power tools, the Space Pen, shock-absorbing materials used in helmets, the joystick video game controllers and, even, golf balls. They all use technollogy or materials originally developed for the space program
Not to mention....The success of Apollo 11 was a milestone for humankind. It showed that people
around the world can work together for a common purpose. It proved that what can
be dreamed can be achieved.
Hm. We're looking for carbon based life. Now, if Mars has silicon based life, and that innocent little rock is 'their leader' who's been waiting for weeks for the primitive Earth craft to arrive and communicate, giving Earthlings one more chance to demonstrate any sort of peaceful intentions before eradicating the third planet...
"We can not resolve simple problems we face here, on our planet"
But that has nothing to do with money. We have enough money for doing anything we have a will to do.
@ jock59801 The only problem is the people with said money couldn't possibly part with it.
Let's see.....NASA research gave us LCD technology, Large Scale Micro Circuitry, chemical propellants, Oxyclean, Di-Hydrous Amonia, Pop-Tarts, and extra soft toilet paper. Do the research.
So refreshing to read about something that fires the imagination with curiosity and discovery and wonder, as opposed to the usual depressing political soundbites to keep the masses fooled and the cultural blight known as Kardashians.
Hey Man, Why not use Beavis 2 to pull Butthead 1 out of the ditch?! F'in A, Man!
"If thats the case then that only furthers my point of why did we abandon the moon exploration... "
Apollo was a child of the Cold War. 'Before the decade is out' and before the Soviets, and it succeeded. (The Soviets, once it was clear in late 1968 or so that they couldn't win, played the game of; "If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried," and claimed to never have been in a 'space race.' All too many people were willing to believe it.
After the first few landings, with social unrest an an unpopular war in Southeast Asia (it was the 60's, you know), support for Apollo, and any similar large program fell away. That's why. And a program that was optimized for speed and not cost, has left the people with the perception that all manned space projects must be horrendously expensive, and with the notion that the only way to go it again must look a lot like Apollo (as in Constellation and SLS).
"Vast quantities of Helium-3 could provide an excellent source of raw materials for humanity's nuclear fusion"
To use in what commercial reactors?
Until and unless we actually get the ability to use it, all the He-3 on the Moon means as much as having a million gallons of refined gasoline in 1880 or so. Maybe a major use for it in a few decades, but right now...so what?
And there's plenty down here for just research purposes. More of it would do nothing to make controlled fusion happen any sooner, that's not the problem. Right now, there is no market for it.
Mars looks like a good place to visit. Once we get there I bet Micky Ds and Starbucks will start appearing everywhere.
I can only qoute the register, best qoute I seen yet...."NO Mr. Rock, I expect you to die!!"
freeze martian, or i will blast you with my super metrological alabaster blaster laser......