NASA / JPL-Caltech

NASA's Curiosity rover, shown in this artist's conception, is equipped to analyze chemicals on Mars.

Although NASA's Curiosity rover hasn't yet confirmed the detection of organic compounds on Mars, it's already seeing that the Red Planet's soil contains water and more complex chemicals — including signs of an intriguing compound called perchlorate.

The first soil sample analysis from Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars lab, or SAM, was the leadoff topic today at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco. The findings were eagerly awaited because of rumors that the Curiosity team was on the verge of announcing major findings — and although NASA tamped down expectations, the scientists said they were overjoyed with the first round of analysis.

"We really consider this a terrific milestone," Paul Mahaffy, a NASA researcher who is SAM's lead scientist, said at the AGU briefing.

Mahaffy said in a statement issued by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that "we have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater."

Curiosity landed in Gale Crater on Aug. 5, and since then it's been studying Martian rocks, soil and atmosphere with a suite of 10 scientific instruments. Its two-year, $2.5 billion primary mission is aimed at determining whether conditions in the crater were ever conducive for microbial life.

SAM is a key tool for that mission, because it can cook Martian samples in a mini-oven and then analyze the gases that are given off to identify the compounds contained in the sample. Other instruments — including the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument, or CheMin — were used as well to study the initial soil samples, collected over the past several weeks from a drift of windblown sand and dust called Rocknest.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

This Oct. 31 view from Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI, shows two of the trenches made by the rover's 1.6-inch-wide (4-centimeter-wide) sampling scoop. The dust and sand from a dune known as Rocknest were fed into Curiosity's onboard labs for analysis.

NASA said CheMin found that the composition of the Rocknest samples was similar to that of soil analyzed by other Mars rovers such as Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity — about half common volcanic minerals, and half non-crystalline minerals such as glass. SAM identified other ingredients in much lower concentrations, including water molecules that were apparently bound to the grains of sand and dust. Although the water wouldn't be enough to support any sort of life, the concentration was higher than expected.

SAM also identified a type of perchlorate, a compound that includes oxygen and chlorine. Perchlorate, which was also found by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander in 2008, is considered a toxic substance and used as an ingredient in rocket fuel on Earth. But scientists say the compound could conceivably serve as an energy source for hardy microbes on Mars. Mahaffy said the particular type of compound detected by Curiosity appeared to be calcium perchlorate, but "we have to study that further."

Reactions with other chemicals in SAM's oven formed chlorinated methane compounds, which geologists consider organic chemicals because they contain carbon and hydrogen. Mahaffy said it was most likely that the chlorine came from a perchlorate-like compound in the soil. However, he said it wasn't yet clear whether the tiny amount of carbon in the compounds came from the Martian soil or was actually brought to Mars from Earth by Curiosity itself.

"We have to be very careful to make sure both the carbon and the chlorine are coming from Mars," he told reporters.

Caltech's John Grotzinger, the project scientist for Curiosity's mission, seconded that view. "We just simply don't know if they're indigenous to Mars or not," he said.

Grotzinger said the team would first have to confirm that the constituents of the organic compounds seen by SAM truly came from Mars. If the presence of organics is confirmed, then the scientists would have to look into whether they are merely part of the "background fall of cosmic material" onto the planet, or arose through chemical processes on Mars itself, he said.

It would take a step-by-step process to confirm the presence of truly Martian organic compounds, and reconstruct how those compounds were formed. "Then you have ... to decide whether or not those formation pathways are abiotic, or maybe in the end biologic," Grotzinger said. "So you see there's a complicated decision pathway there, and we have to explore each one systematically."

Grotzinger cautioned that there would be no "hallelujah moment" in the search for organic chemicals on Mars.

A couple of weeks ago, he was quoted as saying that the data set from Curiosity would be "one for the history books." That led to speculation that an earth-shaking discovery could be revealed at the AGU meeting. NASA later said Grotzinger was referring to the two-year mission as a whole, rather than any specific findings to be announced in the near term.

Today, Grotzinger said his original comments were misunderstood.

"What I've learned from this is that you have to be careful about what you say, and even more careful about how you say it." he told reporters. "We're doing science at the speed of science [but] we live in a world that's sort of at the pace of Instagrams. The enthusiasm that we had, that I had, that our whole team has about what's going on here ... I think it was just misunderstood."

Update for 3:05 p.m. ET: After discussing this report with my friends in the newsroom as well as on Twitter, I've turned the headline around to emphasize the detection of chlorinated methane compounds, even though the origin of those compounds has not yet been confirmed. Is that going too far the other way?

More about Mars Curiosity:

• Mars hype teaches science lessons
• Plastic beads on Mars: Rise and fall of a NASA spoof site
• Curiosity captures spooky self-portraits
• Mars rover driving through dried-up riverbed
• More news about Curiosity's mission

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.

Xavier Jenks (Domatron Graves)

A picture from NASA's Curiosity rover was retouched for a spoof website to look as if Mardi Gras beads were lying on the Martian surface. The whitish-gray object visible in the center of the picture is an actual scrap of plastic that came from Curiosity and was spotted on the ground.

For a while, it almost looked as if NASA was really spilling the beans — or rather, the beads — about the Curiosity rover's hush-hush discoveries on Mars. And that was precisely the problem.

A spoof website, NASAUpdateCenter.us, made a splash on Thursday by proclaiming that Curiosity discovered "small spheres" that turned out to be made of plastic. The purported press release drew heavily on the logos and page design used by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and was accompanied by a picture showing strings of the tiny spheres — which looked suspiciously like Mardi Gras necklaces.

Curiosity's science team is scheduled to provide an eagerly awaited update on the rover mission at an American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco on Monday. Some of the initial news reports suggested the scientists were getting ready to announce a discovery that would be "one for the history books." (On Thursday, NASA said such "rumors and speculation" were incorrect.)

"I basically thought that with all the hype NASA made last week about an earthshaking release, we could build off that hype and set off the story before them," Domatron Graves, a.k.a. Xavier Jenks, explained in an email. Graves, who told me he's a 25-year-old Mardi Gras production artist and "publicity stuntman" from New Orleans, was the prime mover behind the "plastic beads" prank.

The website was meant as a joke, and as a sly marketing campaign for Graves' Mardi Gras team, the Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus. Hence the plastic beads. One of the pages on the site even featured a "Face on Mars" picture that morphed into the furry visage of Chewbacca from the Star Wars saga.

The way Graves tells the story, NASA wasn't amused. He said he received a phone call from someone claiming to be from JPL, informing him that his use of the space agency's logos was a federal offense. Graves and his Web team had the bogus "press release" taken down by 1 p.m. ET today.

"I'm trying not to go to jail," he told me over the phone.

I haven't yet been able to track down exactly who spoke with him. Bert Ulrich, who serves as a multimedia liaison at NASA Headquarters in Washington, told me he wasn't aware that anyone from the agency contacted Graves. "It's news to us," he wrote in an email.

There is a law on the books that forbids the unauthorized use of NASA's official logos and program identifiers (14 CFR 1221), backed up by the threat of a six-month jail term (18 USC 701). But it's unlikely that NASA would actually pursue prosecution — and even if the agency did prosecute, you could argue that Graves and his pals would be protected by policies governing fair use and parody. In any case, that argument is now moot.

One of the issues might have been that the look and feel of the fake press release was so serious, even though the claim was clearly ridiculous. Real names were used in the wrong contexts, and the claims were couched in terms typically used to describe Mars' truly weird blueberries. It'd take a sharp observer (like Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait) to see right away that the whole thing was baloney.

The full text of the bogus press release has been taken down, but you can get a sense of the tone from this screenshot:

Xavier Jenks (Domatron Graves)

This is not a NASA news release, but because of the way it was presented on a spoof website, some people thought it actually came from NASA.

NASA is one of the more trusted agencies in the federal government, although surveys suggest that trust has fallen in recent years. The hubbub over Martian discoveries is particularly sensitive, in light of the misunderstandings surrounding what Curiosity has or has not found so far. So it's understandable that the space agency might not appreciate a spoof that gave the wrong impression — as opposed to a spoof like the "We're NASA and We Know It" viral video, which celebrates the Curiosity mission's true accomplishments.

If Graves had been able to hold out a little bit longer, he would have added some references to the Mardi Gras krewe's home page — to signal that the website was a spoof and generate a little online traffic for Chewbacchus. That's what he did in the case of the New Orleans Bigfoot Society, another prank website that he and his friends cooked up last year. But after the hurried removal of the faux NASA Web pages, the spoof website has been reduced to a text-only page with a Web link paying tribute to "the Sacred Drunken Wookiee!"

Let's just hope Lucasfilm doesn't go after Graves for copyright infringement. NASA's displeasure is nothing, compared to the wrath of the "Star Wars" empire.

Update for 10:30 p.m. ET: Veronica McGregor, who manages the news and social media office at JPL, sent me an email that filled in most of the remaining gaps in the story. "What I know about the site is, the manager/owner was contacted," she wrote. "The content on the site was not a concern, in fact we've truly enjoyed all of the spoofs out there. As you mentioned, it was the use of the page design, name and logos — and the possibility of confusion — that was the concern. ... We didn't think people would be confused over the beads, just the page design."  

Update for 8:25 p.m. ET Dec. 3: The NASAUpdateCenter.us website is back with lots of graphics, but none of the NASA elements that got Graves in trouble. 

More whimsy about the Curiosity rover on Mars:

• LaughPong via YouTube: Cool things to find
• Sat. Morning Breakfast Cereal: How NASA announcements work
• Weird plastic object traced to Mars rover
• More real news about Curiosity's mission

Graves acknowledges that the "Domatron" in his name is a nom d'art, but he insists that the last name is real. "I'm a Graves," he told me. I found his contact information by tracing the domain-registration listing for NASAUpdateCenter.us, and reached him by phone just as he was arranging for the faux press release to be taken down.

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.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo

This mosaic of imagery from Curiosity's navigation camera system shows a scoop on the end of the rover's robotic arm taking a sample of Martian soil on Sol 66 (Oct. 12).

NASA's Curiosity rover is rooting around what scientists call the Martian "Promised Land" — a place where three geological formations come together to provide a deliciously complex picture of Mars' ancient past.

Although the ultimate destination for Curiosity's $2.5 billion, two-year mission is a 3-mile-high mountain called Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp, the rover is going to be spending the next few weeks nosing around its current site, which is called Glenelg. That name comes from a geological formation in Canada's Northwest Territories, but it's also a fitting name because it's spelled the same forward and backward. Similarly, Curiosity will be going backward and forward, retracing its steps for a while when it's time to head for the mountain.

Considering that Curiosity will be in the Promised Land for several weeks, we might as well get to know the place. These pictures from Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo show you the rover's surroundings. Kremer is a New Jersey-based journalist, research chemist and photographer; Di Lorenzo is a physicist who's a high school educator and photographer in Italy.

Both men are part of an active "amateur" community that makes use of the imagery provided by Curiosity and other Mars probes, such as NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Opportunity rover. "Amateur" is in quotes, because the work done by amateur image-processing gurus is such a great complement to the professional work from the Mars mission teams.

Many of these gurus hang out online at UnmannedSpaceflight.com. Some also maintain their own Mars-related websites, such as Martian Vistas, the Gale Gazette and the Road to Endeavour. If you haven't checked out these sites yet ... well, what are you waiting for? And if you have other recommendations for interplanetary imagery, such as the Mars Science Laboratory mission's home page or the Planetary Society's blog network, feel free to pass them along as a comment below.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo

A series of images captured by Curiosity's Mastcam system shows the foreground terrain on Sol 50 (Sept. 26), with eroded hills in the background. Click on the picture to see a larger image.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo

This panorama shows Curiosity's view of Glenelg on Sol 64 (Oct. 10), with hills in the far distance. The mosaic was assembled from 75 images acquired by the Mastcam 100 camera. Click on the picture to see a larger image.

Where in the Cosmos
I used a section of one of the Kremer/Di Lorenzo panoramas as today's "Where in the Cosmos" puzzle picture on the Cosmic Log Facebook page, and it took only a matter of seconds for Bart Salatka (and many others) to name Glenelg as the place where the picture was taken. To reward his quick wits and fast fingers, I'm sending Salatka a pair of 3-D glasses that are being provided courtesy of Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope project. Two of the close runners-up, Josh Sandler and Manny Acevedo, are eligible to receive 3-D glasses as well. Those cardboard specs will come in handy for seeing 3-D pictures from Curiosity's mission, such as this fresh view of the Rocknest site at Glenelg.

Congratulations to the other recent winners of "Where in the Cosmos" honors: Kevin Seaford, Lee Robbins and Tom Phillips for recognizing a satellite image of the aurora borealis; and Jeff Henager and Jenn Mason for identifying dust streaks on Mars. To get in on the action, click the "like" button for the Cosmic Log Facebook page. But hang tight: Due to travel plans, the next "Where in the Cosmos" contest won't take place until December. More about that later...

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.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

Three bite marks left in the Martian ground by the scoop on the Curiosity rover's robotic arm are visible in this image taken by the rover's right navigation camera during the mission's 69th Martian day, or sol (Oct. 15).

NASA's Curiosity rover is analyzing its first Martian soil sample, a load of dirt that may well include some of the "bright shiny objects" noticed by Curiosity's cameras.

Scientists have determined that the mysterious bright flecks of material are native to Mars, and may represent a different kind of mineral. That's one big reason why Curiosity's science team members are so anxious to get back the first detailed mineralogical analysis of Martian soil.

"The most important thing about our mobile laboratory is that it eats dirt," Caltech's John Grotzinger, project scientist for the $2.5 billion Curiosity mission, told reporters today. "That's what we live on."

The bright bits in the sandy soil measure about a millimeter wide, as big as a medium-sized grain of sand. In close-up pictures taken by Curiosity's MAHLI imager, those bits were so unlike the typical reddish grains that scientists held up on scooping dirt into the rover's CheMin (Chemistry and Mineralogy) analyzer until they could figure out what the schmutz was. (Grotzinger said that the science team adopted the Yiddish word for dirt when referring to anomalous bits of bright material on the Martian surface.) 

Last week, Curiosity's cameras spotted a different kind of schmutz that the scientists concluded was plastic debris from the rover itself. This time around, scientists were "super-paranoid" about the potential for putting a contaminated sample into the highly sensitive CheMin lab, Grotzinger said. That's why they took their time deciding whether the latest bright flecks were artificial or natural.

By Monday, the scientists decided they were natural — which raised a new question: What's behind the brightness?

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

This image shows part of the small pit or bite created when NASA's Curiosity rover 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. 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 Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI camera, during the 69th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Oct. 15).

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

The robotic arm on NASA's Curiosity 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). This image taken later that same sol by the rover's left Mast Camera shows the sample on the tray. The tray is 3 inches (7.8 centimeters) in diameter. The sample came from the third scoopful of material collected at Rocknest.

Grotzinger said there were two hypotheses on the table. The first was that the mineral grains were cleaved during their formation to create flat, shiny surfaces that reflect sunlight better than typical Martian sand. The second was that the bright grains really are a different kind of mineral, mixed in with the garden-variety dirt.

The X-ray analysis from the CheMin lab, coupled with additional readings from Curiosity's laser-blasting ChemCam analyzer, should tell the tale, Grotzinger said. "We're kind of hoping that ChemCam can be useful to analyze these particles on a grain-by-grain basis," he said.

One scoopful of dirt, collected by an attachment on the rover's robotic arm, had been used earlier to clean out the internal surfaces of Curiosity's soil-sampling system. A second scoopful was dumped out without being used because of the contamination concerns. The third scoopful was shaken through the system this week, and some of that dirt was fed into CheMin's inlet funnel on Wednesday.

The mineralogical analysis is a big part of Curiosity's two-year mission to determine whether ancient Mars had the chemical wherewithal to be potentially habitable. Grotzinger said that Martian soil could well have served as a home for subsurface life billions of years ago, when the planet was warmer and wetter.

"Now, once and for all, we hope to address what's in the soil of Mars, mineralogically," he said.

Curiosity's other onboard lab — known as Surface Analysis on Mars, or SAM for short — was expected to get its first sample next week. Later on, the rover will use its drill for the first time on Martian rock. Grotzinger suggested that Curiosity would spend the next few weeks investigating the site where it is now: a place known as Glenelg, where three geologically distinct formations come together.

"We consider ourselves to be in the promised land," he said.

By the end of the year, Curiosity is expected to turn back from Glenelg and make its way toward a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain sitting in the middle of Gale Crater, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) away. The six-wheeled, nuclear-powered rover landed on Mars on Aug. 5. Today is the mission's 72nd Martian day, or sol — and although Curiosity has picked up a few dings on its wheels, project manager Richard Cook said the rover "continues to be in great health."

The only recent glitch involved NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which temporarily went into safe mode. That meant the Curiosity team had to turn instead to NASA's Mars Odyssey probe as a backup communication relay for data from the surface. Fortunately, MRO's controllers resolved the safe-mode issue, and "yesterday they went back to full operations," Cook said.

Slideshow: Curiosity's space odyssey to Mars

Trace the Curiosity rover's journey to Mars, and see the first pictures that the six-wheeled robot has sent back from the Red Planet.

Launch slideshow

More about the Curiosity mission:

• Rover digs up shiny particles on Mars
• Rock turns out to be a true curiosity
• Weird Martian object traced to rover
• Cosmic Log archive for Curiosity mission

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.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / LANL

This closeup picture from the Curiosity rover's ChemCam imager shows the mystery object just to left of center. It's the object that looks like a tiny shred of plastic.

A tiny, bright object that was spotted on the Martian surface next to the Curiosity rover appears to be a shred of plastic from the rover itself, NASA reported today.

That assessment, based on an analysis of imagery from the rover's ChemCam micro-imager, echoes the speculation that bubbled up around Twitter (and in Cosmic Log) on Monday. If further investigation confirms the experts' preliminary conclusion, Curiosity should be able to give the shred wide berth and proceed with its scooping activity at a spot known as Rocknest.

Curiosity's scoop had just picked up a full load of soil from Rocknest's sand dune and was shaking it around when the rover team noticed the bright little fleck. Team members decided to hold up on processing the sample until they could identify the object. They want to make sure they won't be putting any contaminants (such as plastic trash) into the rover's sensitive sampling system.

It's not unusual for rovers to spot bits of hardware or other spacecraft debris in their surroundings. Past examples include Opportunity's "bunny ears" (a bit of fabric) and "rover rotini" (an artifact created by the rover's drill), as well as a spring that was dropped onto the surface by the Phoenix Mars Lander. It looks as if Curiosity's shred will join that collection. As we noted on Monday, lots of plastic tape is used on the rover to insulate wiring, and it's likely that a tiny bit of it was shaken loose. 

Here's the mission status report from NASA. If there's a follow-up report on the object, I'll add it to this item:

"Curiosity's main activity in the 62nd sol of the mission (Oct. 8, 2012) was to image a small, bright object on the ground using the Remote Micro-Imager of the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument.

"The rover team's assessment is that the bright object is something from the rover, not Martian material. It appears to be a shred of plastic material, likely benign, but it has not been definitively identified.

"To proceed cautiously, the team is continuing the investigation for another day before deciding whether to resume processing of the sample in the scoop. Plans include imaging of surroundings with the Mastcam.

"A sample of sand and dust scooped up on Sol 61 remains in the scoop. Plans to transfer it from the scoop into other chambers of the sample-processing device were postponed as a precaution during planning for Sol 62 after the small, bright object was detected in an image from the Mast Camera (Mastcam).

"A Sol 62 raw image from ChemCam, at http://1.usa.gov/R1fZHt, shows the object in question just to left of center of the image...."

Update for 8:15 p.m. ET Oct. 10: For the record, NASA is sticking with the plastic-scrap explanation, and Curiosity's robotic arm is back in action. There's an interesting twist to the story: Experts think that the scrap may have fallen onto the rover from the rocket-powered descent stage, which set Curiosity down on the surface at the end of the "seven minutes of terror" on Aug. 5. Then the scrap fell off the rover at Rocknest. Here's today's update from the team:

"The team operating Curiosity decided on Oct. 9, 2012, to proceed with using the rover's first scoop of Martian material. Plans for Sol 64 (Oct. 10) call for shifting the scoopful of sand and dust into the mechanism for sieving and portioning samples, and vibrating it vigorously to clean internal surfaces of the mechanism. This first scooped sample, and the second one, will be discarded after use, since they are only being used for the cleaning process. Subsequent samples scooped from the same 'Rocknest' area will be delivered to analytical instruments.

"Investigation of a small, bright object thought to have come from the rover may resume between the first and second scoop. Over the past two sols, with rover arm activities on hold, the team has assessed the object as likely to be some type of plastic wrapper material, such as a tube used around a wire, possibly having fallen onto the rover from the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft's descent stage during the landing in August.

"Sol 63 activities included extended weather measurements by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station, or REMS. The Sol 63 planning also called for panoramic imaging by the Mast Camera, or Mastcam, in the early morning light of Sol 64, before uplink of Sol 64 commands.

"A Sol 61 raw image from the right Mast Camera, at http://1.usa.gov/VSwTN7 , shows the location from which Curiosity's first scoop of soil was collected.

"Sol 63, in Mars local mean solar time at Gale Crater, ended at 1:03 a.m. Oct. 10, PDT (4:03 a.m., EDT)."

More about Mars:

• Weird object gives Curiosity pause
• Mars rover gets set for its first scoop
• Curiosity rover 'checks in ' to Foursquare
• Curiosity is driving through dried-up riverbed

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.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / Will Pomerantz

A detail from the Curiosity rover's Mastcam system shows the rover's sampling scoop filled with Martian soil — and a tiny bright object in the foreground. The commentary was added by Will Pomerantz on Twitter. Check NASA's Photojournal for larger versions of the photo.

NASA's Curiosity rover dug up its first scoopful of sandy soil on Sunday and swished it around like a connoisseur tasting wine. But the long-anticipated sampling session had to be put on hold when Curiosity's handlers spotted a bright and tiny object nearby.

What the heck is it? A loose screw? A cigarette butt? A piece of Martian macaroni? The mystery lit up a few Twitter feeds this afternoon, but for now, the best hypothesis seems to be that it's a bit of plastic that fell off the rover.

Such droppings aren't unusual. "All the cool landers drop stuff on Mars," joked Sarah Milkovich, a member of the Curiosity team as well as the science team for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Her Twitter tweet included a link to a picture of hardware dropped onto the Martian surface by Phoenix Mars Lander back in 2008.

The Curiosity rover's Twitter account got into the act: "Team spotted bright object on ground near me — possibly a piece of rover hardware? Gathering more data," she tweeted. Even Sarcastic Rover chimed in: "Did anyone lose an earring on Mars? Because I may have found it. Or else I'm falling apart. But let's hope earring."

Seriously, though ... The Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla turned up a picture from Curiosity's ChemCam imager that seemed to show a tiny shred of plastic wrap — perhaps a bit of the insulating tape that's used all over the rover.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / LANL / CNES / IRAP

A picture from the ChemCam imager on NASA's Curiosity rover appears to show a shred of plastic at the center. Is that what the tiny mystery object will turn out to be? Stay tuned.

Stopping the scooping
The object was spotted just as Curiosity was using its scoop to pick up Martian soil from a sandy site known as "Rocknest." The plan was to shovel and shake the light soil to clear out the sample collection system mounted on the end of Curiosity's 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) robotic arm, known as CHIMRA (Collection and Handling for In-situ Martian Rock Analysis). But today, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported that Curiosity's team refrained from using the robotic arm in order to check out the weird object.

"Curiosity is acquiring additional imaging of the object to aid the team in identifying the object and assessing possible impact, if any, to sampling activities," JPL said in its mission status report.

As Milkovich noted, Mars surface probes will occasionally spot anomalous bits of stuff such as the "bunny ears" and the "Martian macaroni" seen by the Opportunity rover. These cases have generally been explained as bits of fabric or metal left behind by the rover, and it seems likely that the same will be said of Curiosity's "cigarette butt."

Such debris is harmless — but if even a bit of it happened to get into the rover's sensitive chemistry labs, that could ruin the scientific readings. Even before the rover was launched, scientists worried that the plastic tape would throw off the rover's chemistry experiments. That's why Curiosity's team is being so careful about what to do next.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

An image from Curiosity's left navigation camera shows a 1.8-inch-wide (4.5-centimeter-wide) divot in a sand dune at the "Rocknest" site on Mars, left behind when the rover removed a scoopful of soil.

Clearing Curiosity's throat
Eventually, the sand scooping will continue, either at Rocknest or another site. The first few samples won't undergo any chemical analysis. Instead, the material will be shaken around and sent through Curiosity's sorting and sampling chambers to clear out any schmutz that's left over from the rover's journey to Mars.

Daniel Limonadi, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told reporters last week that the palate-cleansing was required even though the hardware is "super-squeaky-clean when it's delivered and assembled" at JPL. "By virtue of its just being on Earth, you get a kind of residual oily film that is impossible to avoid," he said.

Once the soil has been shaken and stirred through the chambers, it'll be ejected from the mechanism and plopped back onto the Martian surface. "We effectively use it to rinse out our mouth three times and then kind of spit out," Limonadi said.

When the palate-cleansing is complete, in about a week or so, CHIMRA will start delivering samples to Curiosity's two onboard chemical labs, known as Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM; and the Chemical and Mineralogy experiment, or CheMin. Today's mission status report from NASA notes that those two instruments "will play crucial roles in evaluating whether the study area has ever had a favorable environment for microbial life."

Determining whether Mars was potentially habitable in ancient times is the prime goal for Curiosity's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission. The nuclear-powered rover landed in Mars' Gale Crater on Aug. 5 and is on its way to a geologically interesting spot called Glenelg, where it's expected to use its percussive rock drill for the first time. After spending several weeks at Glenelg, Curiosity is due to turn around and head for a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain that is thought to preserve billions of years' worth of geological history.

Update for 3:20 p.m. ET Oct. 9: The real experts on the Curiosity mission are leaning toward the plastic-tape hypothesis. Get the full scoop here.

More about Curiosity's mission:

• Mars rover gets set for its first scoop
• Curiosity rover 'checks in ' to Foursquare
• Curiosity is driving through dried-up riverbed

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.

A close look at pebble-filled layers of rock has convinced scientists that NASA's Curiosity rover is driving through a dried-up stream bed on Mars where water flowed vigorously billions of years ago. They say it's the kind of place that just might have supported life when the planet was young.

"This is a rock that was formed in the presence of water," Caltech's John Grotzinger, project scientist for the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission, said today during a televised news conference at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The evidence is in the shape, size and composition of the rocks that Curiosity came across at multiple sites during its landing on Aug. 5. Conglomerate rocks, consisting of pebbles cemented together within layers of sediment, were seen at three sites:

• Goulburn, a bedrock formation that was exposed by the blast from Curiosity's descent.
• Link, a rock outcrop that was seen once Curiosity headed out from the landing site.
• Hottah, an uplifted slab of craggy rock that was given a visual inspection two weeks ago.

Hottah in particular showed clear evidence of rounded pebbles that were too big to be smoothed by the action of the wind. Some of the rocks are as big as golf balls. The best explanation for the gravelly pebbles was that they were eroded by the vigorous flow of water, said Curiosity science team member Rebecca Williams, a senior scientist at the Arizona-based Planetary Science Institute.

The Hottah slab, which measures 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 centimeters) thick, looks as if "somebody came along the surface of Mars with a jackhammer and lifted up a sidewalk that you might see in downtown LA, sort of like in a construction site," Grotzinger said.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

A closeup view of the "Hottah" rock outcrop shows the characteristic pebbly rock that is associated with the action of a flowing stream. Broken surfaces of the outcrop have rounded, gravel clasts, such as the one circled in white, which is about 1.2 inches (3 centimeters) across. The rock formation was named after Hottah Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / PSI

This set of images compares the Link outcrop of rocks on Mars (left) with similar rocks seen on Earth (right). The image of Link, obtained by NASA's Curiosity rover, shows rounded gravel fragments, or clasts, up to a couple of inches (few centimeters) wide, within the rock outcrop. In accordance with the Mars mission's tradition, Link takes its name from a rock formation in Canada's Northwest Territories.

The evidence from the ground meshes well with the evidence from orbit indicating that Curiosity is near an 11-mile-wide (18-kilometer-wide) fan of material that may have washed down a channel in ancient times, when Mars was warmer and wetter, according to William Dietrich, a planetary scientist at the University of California at Berkeley.

"These stones ... are very, very revealing to us about the process," Dietrich said. Some previous research has suggested that water flowed on Mars only for brief periods, separated by long, cold, dry spells. That scenario might not have provided enough time for life to get a foothold on the Red Planet in ancient times. But Dietrich said the patterning of the channels within the fan suggested that water streamed through the area for well beyond a thousand-year time scale.

"We can step away from the idea that there was a single burst of water ... that built it all in a day," he told reporters.

Based on the size of the gravel seen by Curiosity, Dietrich estimated that the water moved at a speed of about 3 feet (1 meter) per second, at a depth somewhere between ankle and hip deep.

"Plenty of papers have been written about channels on Mars with many different hypotheses about the flows in them," Dietrich said in a NASA news release. "This is the first time we're actually seeing water-transported gravel on Mars. This is a transition from speculation about the size of streambed material to direct observation of it."

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Ariz.

This image shows the topography, with shading added, around the area where NASA's Curiosity rover landed. Higher elevations are colored in red, with cooler colors indicating transitions downslope to lower elevations. The map highlights an alluvial fan of material, apparently issuing from a channel named Peace Vallis. The black oval indicates the targeted landing area for the rover known as the "landing ellipse," and the cross shows where the rover actually landed.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / UC-Berkeley

This image shows a dry streambed on an alluvial fan in Chile's Atacama Desert, revealing the typical patchy, heterogeneous mixture of grain sizes deposited together. On Mars, Curiosity has seen two rock outcrops close to its Bradbury Landing site that also record a mixture of sand and pebbles transported by water. Scientists say the mixture was probably deposited along an ancient streambed.

So far, the scientists' conclusions are based exclusively on visual observations by Curiosity's high-resolution Mastcam imager. Further imagery, along with chemical readings from other instruments on the rover, will likely be used to fill out the story of the ancient stream bed, Grotzinger said.

The main goal of Curiosity's two-year primary mission is to assess how habitable Mars was in ancient times. That's why mission managers chose 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) Gale Crater as Curiosity's landing site. It has that alluvial fan, which appears to issue forth from a channel that has now officially been designated Peace Vallis. It also has a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain, known as Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp, which could preserve billions of years' worth of Mars' geological record.

Grotzinger noted that the three requirements for habitability typically listed by astrobiologists are the presence of liquid water, the availability of an energy source (such as sunlight) and the presence of carbon-based compounds that can be used as the building blocks of life. 

"Now we've got a hall pass for the water examination," Grotzinger joked.

Theoretically, a long-flowing stream could be a habitable environment. "It is not our top choice as an environment for preservation of organics, though," Grotzinger said in NASA's news release. "We're still going to Mount Sharp, but this is insurance that we have already found our first potentially habitable environment."

Even if the rover's instruments detect the right kinds of carbon compounds, that would not serve as confirmation of ancient life on Mars. That would "have to wait for another mission," Grotzinger said.  

More from Mars Curiosity:

• See a crescent moon in Martian sky
• Curiosity touches first rock, then takes off
• Mars rover spots mini-moon's transit
• Cosmic Log archive on the Mars mission

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 dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

The first rock that NASA's Curiosity rover will touch for science's sake on Mars is a pyramid-shaped chunk that's been named in honor of a top engineer who worked on every one of NASA's rover missions — but passed away just days after Curiosity's landing.

Curiosity's study of the rock, dubbed "Jake Matijevic," will dominate the next few days of the rover's operations on Mars, just as its observations of Martian mini-eclipses dominated the past few days.

Jake the rock, which measures about 10 inches (25 centimeters) tall and 16 inches (40 centimeters) wide, isn't all that exotic. It seems to consist of garden-variety basalt, similar to the first Martian rock that NASA's Spirit rover examined eight and a half years ago. And that's exactly the point, according to Caltech's John Grotzinger, project scientist for the Curiosity mission. Jake will provide a good yardstick for sophisticated instruments such as the Alpha Proton X-Ray Spectrometer, or APXS, and the laser-zapping ChemCam analyzer.

By matching up the chemical readings from the different instruments, Curiosity's science team will be able to confirm that the findings from the fancy-schmancy ChemCam are consistent with the readings from the APXS, an upgraded version of a device that was included on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. Grotzinger told reporters today that it's an opportunity to compare "something which is tried and true with the latest and greatest new technology."

ChemCam can focus on areas that are less than a millimeter (0.04 inch) wide, while the APXS' best resolution ranges around 1.5 centimeters (0.6 inch).

Grotzinger estimated that the testing could begin on Friday — which is the Martian day, or sol, after tomorrow ("solorrow," he quipped). It could take a couple of sols for the rover to reach out its 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) robotic arm and use the APXS as well as the fine-resolution Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI. The rover might have to back up a bit to give the rock a proper zapping with ChemCam's laser. The flashes of light from the tiny laser blasts will be analyzed by an onboard spectrometer to determine the rock's elemental composition.

Remembering Jake
Richard Cook, project manager for the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission, said the rock's name pays tribute to Jacob Matijevic, a leading engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was involved in NASA's rover missions since Mars Pathfinder and the Sojourner rover in 1997. Matijevic was a Chicago native who earned his Ph.D. in mathematics and came up with the Matijevic Theorem, which was once described as "one of the most beautiful results of recent years in commutative algebra."

Matijevic's obituary in the Chicago Tribune notes that he came to JPL in 1981 and took on a variety of assignments. Eventually, he came to specialize in systems engineering for the Mars rover designs as well as rover surface operations. "He was probably one of the top one or two experts on surface operations here at JPL," Cook said.

Matijevic played a key role in the Spirit and Opportunity rover missions, which were originally planned to last just 90 days on Mars. Grotzinger recalled that Matijevic once said "if this rover lasts six months, it'll probably last six years."

"He seems to have come pretty close," Grotzinger observed.

The engineer switched over from Opportunity to the Mars Science Laboratory mission, but passed away at the age of 64 on Aug. 20, after battling respiratory problems, the Tribune reported.

Grotzinger said Matijevic would have loved dealing with the complexities involved in studying the rock that's named after him. "All that activity and all those considerations are what honor Jake Matijevic so well," he said.

The chief aim of Curiosity's two-year primary mission is to analyze Mars' geology and surface chemistry and determine whether the planet could have been potentially habitable in ancient times. After studying Jake's memorial rock, Curiosity is due to move on to an area known as Glenelg, where three types of geological formations come together.

Since its landing on Mars on Aug. 5, the six-wheeled rover has covered more than half of the quarter-mile (400-meter) distance to Glenelg, and its cameras are getting a better view of the place. Grotzinger said the pictures show thin bands of dark rock that appear to alternate with lighter-toned rock. "As we get closer in to the Glenelg area, we'll understand better and better what these areas are," Grotzinger said. Curiosity is expected to get to the area in a couple of weeks, he said.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Ariz.

This map shows the route driven by the Curiosity rover through the mission's 43rd Martian day, or sol (Sept. 19). By Sol 43, Curiosity had driven about 950 feet (290 meters). The area known as Glenelg is indicated by a red dot and label.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

A scan of the Martian terrain looking toward Glenelg reveals areas of light and dark rock.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS An animated GIF image shows Phobos crossing over the sun, as seen by NASA's Curiosity rover.

Messages from mini-eclipses
The Curiosity team is also planning to receive more pictures of the partial solar eclipses that the rover's high-resolution Mastcam system has observed over the past week. Mark Lemmon, a science team co-investigator from Texas A&M University, said close analysis of the imagery could provide insights into the interior structure of Mars and its two moons, Phobos and Deimos.

Mastcam took hundreds of pictures when Phobos made two passes over the sun's disk, and again when Deimos made one pass. Such transits occur multiple times during a short season, and then they don't occur again for nearly one Earth year. Lemmon explained that the timing of the eclipses could be compared with past sightings to produce precise measurements of how the moons' orbits have changed due to Mars' gravitational tides.

"We can't go inside Mars, but we can use these to tell how much Mars is deformed when the moons go by," Lemmon said. "So we measure the transits very precisely [and] we get information on Mars' interior structure."

Some high-resolution images from Phobos' first transit were sent down to Earth over the weekend, but most of the imagery is still saved in the rover's computer memory on Mars, awaiting the right opportunity for transmission, Lemmon said.

Phobos and Deimos have irregular shapes, and the prevailing wisdom is that they're both asteroids that were pulled into orbit by Mars' gravitational pull. Phobos averages 14 miles (22.2 kilometers) in width, and Deimos is roughly 8 miles (12.6 kilometers) wide. Deimos circles Mars at a distance of 14,580 miles (23,460 kilometers), while Phobos is much closer (5,800 miles, or 9,400 kilometers). Phobos is gradually coming even closer to Mars, which makes the moon's orbit unstable over the long term: One of these days, it will break up into pieces and perhaps produce a ring of debris around the Red Planet.

Fortunately, that day isn't expected to come for 10 million to 15 million years. "Curiosity will be safe for a little while," Lemmon said.

More about Mars:

• How a rover on Mars is blazing a trail on Earth
• Martian moon bites into the sun
• Spheres spark new Martian mystery
• Cosmic Log archive on the Curiosity mission

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 dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

Ashitey Trebi-Olennu is one of the engineers behind the robotic arm system on NASA's Curiosity rover. He has also been a rover planner for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, and worked on the robotic arm system for the Phoenix Mars Lander.

The robotic arm on NASA's Curiosity rover should set a new standard for robotic operations on Mars — and it could revolutionize robotics on Earth as well.

At least that's what Ashítey Trebi-Ollennu, one of the four robotic-arm system engineers on the Mars Science Laboratory team, is looking forward to. He expects the features developed for Curiosity's 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) robotic arm to show up on a planet near you in the form of NASA-enabled technologies, or NETs.

"Anytime I see a technology, I say to myself, 'Is this a NET?'" he told me last week.

The robotic arm cleared the last of its commissioning tests last Thursday, and is now ready for duty on Gale Crater. Just based on metrics alone, Curiosity's arm is in a class by itself: It's twice as long as the arm that was installed on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, and is tipped with a turnable, twistable turret that weighs 30 kilograms (66 pounds), or about as much as a small child.

That turret is bristling with instruments — including an X-ray spectrometer, a fine-resolution camera, a scoop and some sifters, a dust-sweeping brush, and a percussive drill that can smash rock to bits for analysis in the rover's onboard chemistry labs. The arm is designed to press that drill against the rock with a force of 300 newtons (67 pounds), which is more of a push than a construction worker generally uses for overhead drilling on Earth.

It's a formidable machine, which has to be managed with care from a distance of 175 million miles (282 million kilometers). "You can do a lot of damage if you don't take precautions," Trebi-Ollennu said. "You could damage a camera on the mast, you could damage instruments on the turret, you could run it into the ground."

That's what he and his colleagues on the robotic-arm team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have been working to avoid: They tested all the sequences the arm is expected to run in advance, in simulations and a robotic test bed. Now the same tests have been run on the actual rover. There were no surprises on Earth, and no surprises so far on Mars, either.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo

Curiosity's robotic arm rises above the Martian landscape in a picture taken by the robot's navigation camera.

Earthly applications
The fact that robotic operations can be conducted so smoothly from so far away is a good sign for telerobotics on Earth, Trebi-Ollennu said. He foresees a day when a "factory in a can" could be delivered to a remote location — say, a nuclear cleanup site in Japan or an oil spill in the depths of the Gulf of Mexico — and go about its business as if humans were on the scene.

"You could have somebody several thousand miles away and operate this factory in a can remotely," Trebi-Ollennu said. "If you have a factory in the can, you can have the level of penetration that you have with cellphones today."

Another innovation comes in the form of the titanium arm's pushing power. "You want to have a running back with the power of a linebacker," said Trebi-Olennu, adapting a football-team comparision. "You want to get 300 newtons, but you want to get it in a small package."

Advantageous weight-to-power ratios come in handy for robotic applications on Earth as well as Mars. "We are trying to design systems that can 'push' above their weight, and at the same time not break," Trebi-Olennu said.

Another innovation with potential earthly applications is the rover's array of piezoelectric actuators, which use electrical impulses to shake powdered rock and soil out of its sampling containers and into its SAM and CheMin laboratories. "These have the potential of having a very big impact in the pharmaceutical industry," Trebi-Olennu said.

The technology underlying the actuators was co-developed by JPL and Cybersonics, and it's already being used in Cybersonics' CyberWand medical equipment. The CyberWand dual-action lithotripter simultaneously applies ultrasound and a "jackhammer" action to pulverize bladder stones and suck away the dust.

Global reach
Trebi-Ollennu, who was born in Ghana and trained as an engineer in Britain and the United States, says telerobotics will eventually make the world seem smaller. Specialists based at the world's best medical centers will be able to direct operations in faraway locations, and manufacturers will be able to place mobile robotic factories closer to the source of the raw materials they require.

This vision isn't the nightmare of robots from another planet invading Earth. Rather, it's the dream of humans and robots working together, using technology initially developed for another planet, to make our own world better. Someday, maybe that technology will help us settle other worlds as well.

"It's such a robust system that you can get the robot to do what the robot is good at doing, and you have the human doing what the human is good at doing," Trebi-Ollennu said. "You have a strong package."

Hat tip to the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers for facilitating last week's conversation with Trebi-Ollennu, who is a senior member of the IEEE. To learn more about the instruments on the robotic arm's turret, check out this blog post from the Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla.

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.