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Rover Team Chooses 1st Rock Drilling Target for Curiosity

Sunday, January 13, 2013 17:40

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(Before It's News)

Image caption: Time lapse mosaic shows Curiosity rover’s arm movement from raised position to surface deployment on Sol 149 (Jan. 5) for contact science near the lower point of the slithery chain of narrow protruding rocks known as ‘Snake River’ located inside the basin called “Yellowknife Bay’. The rover team will soon conduct historic first rock drilling in these surroindings. Photomosaic was stitched from Navcam raw images and is colorized with patches of sky added to fill in image gaps. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

A team of Mars scientists and engineers have chosen the 1st rock drilling target for NASA’s Curiosity rover after carefully considering a range of options over the past several weeks at the robots current location inside a shallow depression known as ‘Yellowknife Bay’, which is replete with light toned rocks.

An official NASA announcement with further information is forthcoming early this week, according to a source for this report.

Curiosity is now conducting a detailed science evaluation of the vicinity around a slithery chain of rocks called ‘Snake River’, jutting up from the sandy, rock strewn Martian floor - see our illustrative photo mosaics above & below and earlier story here.

Drilling goes to the heart of the mission and will mark a historic feat in planetary exploration – as the (…)
Read the rest of Rover Team Chooses 1st Rock Drilling Target for Curiosity (769 words)

© Ken Kremer for Universe Today, 2013. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Curiosity, Curiosity Rover, Gale crater, Mars, Mars Rovers, Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), Mount Sharp, MSL, NASA, Opportunity Rover, Spirit Rover