The Curiosity On Mars Thread.

mickmackey1

It looks way taller than ⅕ of an inch or is that my eyes...

shedweller

First hole drilled and all looks ok.

Before-and-After Blink of Curiosity 'Mini Drill' into Mars Rock
A blink pair of images taken before and after Curiosity performed a "mini drill" test on a Martian rock shows changes resulting from that activity. The resulting hole and surrounding pile of drill cuttings are not the only changes.

The images were taken by the telephoto camera of the Mast Camera instrument on Curiosity. The diameter of the hole created by the drill is 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters). The before image was taken on the 178th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's mission on Mars (Feb. 4, 2013). The drill test was performed on Sol 180 (Feb. 6, 2013) and the afterwards image was taken the same sol.

The test drilling was a preparation for the mission's first full rock drilling. The location is on a patch of flat rock called "John Klein." If the cuttings are judged to be suitable for processing by the rover's sample handling mechanisms, the mission's first full drilling is planned for a nearby spot on John Klein. The full drilling will be the first rock drilling on Mars to collect a sample of material for analysis.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16762.html




Interesting to note that the soil around the rock settled during drilling. Probably hasn't experienced a vibration in a few billion years!

shedweller

Here's a self portrait taken before the drilling operation. She's looking a bit dustier lately!
Link to full res where you can see the dust on the rover easier:
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/725560main_PIA16764_selfie2ndfincrop_full.jpg

Knifey Spoony

Is anyone else trying to get their head around how that photo above was taken?

littlemac1980

On the large image of the Drill Hole, you can clearly see what appear to be the remnants of bubble's in the rock. Kind of like plaster that wasn't mixed properly and left to set. What does that suggest about how that rock formed?

I would have thought it indicates the rock solidified very quickly before the air had a chance to escape, and also formed in circumstances which could have allowed air to get trapped in the first place, i.e. a similarly quick (or at least energetic) event, e.g. in a river with air and water mixing in clay, or a lava eruption curtaining areas in hot magma.

Thats just my thoughts, I'm wondering if anyone with a bit of specific scientific knowledge could comment.

I've always thought looking at the blueberry formations that they may have been formed through some similar process of quick cooling, trapping gas that is in the process of bubbling out of some clay, magma, or the like.

That would make sense given the present temperature on Mars. If some such energetic process took place, it would tend to cool down far quicker than we are used to observing on Earth.

One thing I find a bit usual, is that the bubble features on the rock suggest that there has been very little erosion. Does that mean that they are quite recent formations, or is the level of erosion so low on Mars that they could be there for 10's of thousands or millions of years?

Another thing that I'm curious about is that if the bubbles must have been formed by some process involving liquid becoming solid, then was it lava, or was it water, or what type of liquid was involved to produce the mud. The suggestion so far (as far as Im aware) is that the area where the above image was taken is from what is now considered an ancient river/lake/sea bed.

If such is the case, the what are the implications of seeing fresh features (such as the bubbles above) in the rock, in relation to determining how long ago the liquid necessary to create them disappeared. Surely if something like that was present in a similar environment on earth it wouldn't last longer than a few thousand years in even the most tame of desert environments.

thecommander

Knifey Spoony wrote: »

Is anyone else trying to get their head around how that photo above was taken?

There's an animation on this page.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/121204-curiosity-mars-rover-portrait-science-space/

shedweller

Looks a bit deeper than the other day. The um, drillage appears to be flattened as if it were compressed by the base of the drill housing. Which would indicate a full depth drill.


I can't find any news updates on this latest drilling but i did find a wonderful photo here:http://www.db-prods.net/blog/2013/02/08/crepuscule-sur-glenelg-sol-170-176/

Capt'n Midnight

re the metal

I presume Mars would have had some of the concentrating mechanisms that were on earth, so there is a chance of gold nuggets ?

Since the atmosphere isn't oxidising then could we expect native silver / mercury ?

Minerals like quartz and mica would also shine too.

Aquarius34

I still can't stress enough what a waste of money this is. All taxpayers money going on this for nothing. It's quite sad, but I have to laugh as a means to rise above this illusion....

I think the rovers should head to the Cydonia region.

thecommander

Aquarius34 wrote: »

I still can't stress enough what a waste of money this is. All taxpayers money going on this for nothing. It's quite sad, but I have to laugh as a means to rise above this illusion....

I think the rovers should head to the Cydonia region.

The reason you think Cydonia is of interest is because of images that came from a US mission. That mission was paid for by tax dollars.

2 stroke

Aquarius34 wrote: »

I still can't stress enough what a waste of money this is. All taxpayers money going on this for nothing. It's quite sad, but I have to laugh as a means to rise above this illusion....

I think the rovers should head to the Cydonia region.

They didn't send any money into space, it's all still here on earth.

shedweller

Aquarius34 wrote: »

I still can't stress enough what a waste of money this is. All taxpayers money going on this for nothing. It's quite sad, but I have to laugh as a means to rise above this illusion....

I think the rovers should head to the Cydonia region.

You know where the ct forum is. And can i just point out that said taxpayers money went to peoples pockets that then went and spent it on everyday things that a portion of was tax. I must also point out that the nasa budget is microscopic compared to other governmental spending. Pitifully microscopic. We (notice i said "we" as in humanity)should be spending more actually. Way way more. In fact, i would go as far as saying that everything we do on this earth should be about space exploration and everybodys goal should be to pool our resources and intellect to explore the universe.

Or we could just shoot stupid missiles at each other and go around in useless perpetual circles, like we are now.

shedweller

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Curiosity rover has, for the first time, used a drill carried at the end of its robotic arm to bore into a flat, veiny rock on Mars and collect a sample from its interior. This is the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars.
The fresh hole, about 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) wide and 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) deep in a patch of fine-grained sedimentary bedrock, can be seen in images and other data Curiosity beamed to Earth Saturday. The rock is believed to hold evidence about long-gone wet environments. In pursuit of that evidence, the rover will use its laboratory instruments to analyze rock powder collected by the drill.

"We commanded the first full-depth drilling, and we believe we have collected sufficient material from the rock to meet our objectives of hardware cleaning and sample drop-off," said Avi Okon, drill cognizant engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Rock powder generated during drilling travels up flutes on the bit. The bit assembly has chambers to hold the powder until it can be transferred to the sample-handling mechanisms of the rover's Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) device.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20130209.html

Beeker

shedweller wrote: »

You know where the ct forum is. And can i just point out that said taxpayers money went to peoples pockets that then went and spent it on everyday things that a portion of was tax. I must also point out that the nasa budget is microscopic compared to other governmental spending. Pitifully microscopic. We (notice i said "we" as in humanity)should be spending more actually. Way way more. In fact, i would go as far as saying that everything we do on this earth should be about space exploration and everybodys goal should be to pool our resources and intellect to explore the universe.

Or we could just shoot stupid missiles at each other and go around in useless perpetual circles, like we are now.

Very well said!

shedweller

The ChemCam has been getting a little more use since the hole was drilled.
I did some more reading on the chemcan remote imager and found this:http://www.msl-chemcam.com/index.php?menu=inc&page_consult=textes&rubrique=64&sousrubrique=224&soussousrubrique=0&art=259&titre_url=&step=2#.URppd2dgH49

RMI Imaging: The imager software inherited from Rosetta includes autoexposure algorithms, with typically four different exposures made, and the best image is kept. For a typical rock analysis scenario a full 1024x1024 pixel image is taken prior to LIBS analysis, and an image of only the analysis spot (e.g., 128x128) is taken subsequent to analysis. While LIBS and RMI will be used frequently together, there will be numerous times when RMI will be used separately, such as to provide close-up images to support arm-mounted experiments, or provide images of very distant objects.

These pictures seem to be more than 128x128 pixels but i am still perplexed at the circular distortion present.
It's not a crop of a larger picture because the border of the picture is circular and nobody would crop a picture like this to a circle.
Thecommander, i need that email of yer man in JPL. STAT!!:pac:



Here's a view of the drill area minus the robotic arm.

thecommander

shedweller wrote: »

It's not a crop of a larger picture because the border of the picture is circular and nobody would crop a picture like this to a circle.

Probably some sort of fisheye lens.

TheUsual

On CNN they reported that the one of Rover drivers has left his job, and joined Google.

http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/12/mars-rover-driver-leaves-the-steering-wheel/?hpt=hp_t3


Maybe Google are planning to hack into the Rover software and generate a Mars version of Google Earth ?

Mountainsandh

that would be so cool

shedweller

Some more light reading: http://physik-instrumente.blogspot.ie/2012/09/enabling-curiosity-with-pi-and-pi-micos.html

And an explanation of the rock protrusion:http://www.universetoday.com/99890/scientist-explains-the-weird-shiny-thing-on-mars/

As we reported last week, images from the Curiosity rover showed what looked like a piece of shiny metal sticking out from a rock. Some of our readers suggested that it might be a handle or knob of some kind. It’s a knob, yes, says Ronald Sletten from the Mars Science Laboratory team, but a completely natural formation. Sletten, from the University of Washington, explained that, not surprisingly, it is actually a part of the rock that is different — harder and more resistant to erosion — than the rest of the rock it’s embedded in.

On Earth, as on Mars, “often you can see knobs or projections on surfaces eroded by the wind, particularly when a harder, less erodible rock is on top,” Sletten said, via an email to Universe Today from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory media relations office. “The rock on top of the projection is likely more resistant to wind erosion and protects the underlying rock from being eroded.”

Capt'n Midnight

“The rock on top of the projection is likely more resistant to wind erosion and protects the underlying rock from being eroded.”

Like the natural Sphinx shaped rocks of the desert

shedweller

Laser Hits on Martian Drill Tailings
A day after NASA's Mars rover Curiosity drilled the first sample-collection hole into a rock on Mars, the rover's Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument shot laser pulses into the fresh rock powder that the drilling generated. This scene shows a line of pits left by laser hits on the drill tailings. The view is an annotated mosaic of images taken by the remote micro-imager in ChemCam, with color information from Curiosity's Mast Camera.

The drilled hole, at lower center, is about 0.6 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter. Curiosity drilled the hole 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) deep during the 182nd Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (Feb. 8, 2013). ChemCam repeatedly zapped several points near the hole on Sol 183 (Feb. 9, 2013) to obtain spectra providing information about composition, and then on the same sol took the images that have been combined to create this view. Arrows at 10 locations indicate the marks from the laser hits.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16765.html

shedweller

Was doing a bit of digging and found this picture, showing just how much test drilling has been done over the years. Yes, years.:eek:

Preparation on Earth for Drilling on Mars
The development of the Mars rover Curiosity's capabilities for drilling into a rock on Mars required years of development work. This is a group photo of some of the rocks used in bit development testing and lifespan testing in 2007, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Most of the holes are the same diameter as holes Curiosity drills: 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters).

Development and testing models of drills for Curiosity have been used on many types of terrestrial rocks over a span of more than five years.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16732.html

Cmar-Ireland

Posted over on YLYL, might get a chuckle here

shedweller

^^^^^^^
That's another way of looking at it!:D

Meanwhile:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20130209.html

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Curiosity rover has, for the first time, used a drill carried at the end of its robotic arm to bore into a flat, veiny rock on Mars and collect a sample from its interior. This is the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars.
The fresh hole, about 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) wide and 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) deep in a patch of fine-grained sedimentary bedrock, can be seen in images and other data Curiosity beamed to Earth Saturday. The rock is believed to hold evidence about long-gone wet environments. In pursuit of that evidence, the rover will use its laboratory instruments to analyze rock powder collected by the drill.
"The most advanced planetary robot ever designed is now a fully operating analytical laboratory on Mars," said John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for the agency's Science Mission Directorate. "This is the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August, another proud day for America."
For the next several days, ground controllers will command the rover's arm to carry out a series of steps to process the sample, ultimately delivering portions to the instruments inside.
"We commanded the first full-depth drilling, and we believe we have collected sufficient material from the rock to meet our objectives of hardware cleaning and sample drop-off," said Avi Okon, drill cognizant engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Days?................Days?:(
So that explains why reports have not being coming home about the rover. It's doing a snails impression of tai chi!:pac:

not sure if you all heard, there is a press conference later

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-065

3ndahalfof6

Jake1 wrote: »

not sure if you all heard, there is a press conference later

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-065[/QUOTE]

I hope there will be something interesting, but I would be thinking if there was anything it would of been leaked by now, but I will still be watching with big eyes wide open.

3ndahalfof6

3ndahalfof6 wrote: »

Jake1 wrote: »

not sure if you all heard, there is a press conference later

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-065[/QUOTE]

I hope there will be something interesting, but I would be thinking if there was anything it would of been leaked by now, but I will still be watching with big eyes wide open.

Maybe maybe not, but might be worth a gander all the same

Mountainsandh

what time is this for us please ?

sorry I'm too lazy to figure it out ...

shedweller

Mountainsandh wrote: »

what time is this for us please ?

sorry I'm too lazy to figure it out ...

20:00 gmt. Heres a handy converter for you:http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/est-to-gmt-converter
Extract from nasa page:

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA will host a media teleconference at noon PST (3 p.m. EST) today, Feb. 20, to provide an update on the Mars rover Curiosity mission. Earlier today, Curiosity engineers confirmed the rover had collected the first-ever sample from inside a rock on Mars.

ZeRoY

NASA Rover Confirms First Drilled Mars Rock Sample



February 20, 2013

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has relayed new images that confirm it has successfully obtained the first sample ever collected from the interior of a rock on another planet. No rover has ever drilled into a rock beyond Earth and collected a sample from its interior.

Transfer of the powdered-rock sample into an open scoop was visible for the first time in images received Wednesday at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"Seeing the powder from the drill in the scoop allows us to verify for the first time the drill collected a sample as it bore into the rock," said JPL's Scott McCloskey, drill systems engineer for Curiosity. "Many of us have been working toward this day for years. Getting final confirmation of successful drilling is incredibly gratifying. For the sampling team, this is the equivalent of the landing team going crazy after the successful touchdown."

The drill on Curiosity's robotic arm took in the powder as it bored a 2.5-inch (6.4-centimeter) hole into a target on flat Martian bedrock on Feb. 8. The rover team plans to have Curiosity sieve the sample and deliver portions of it to analytical instruments inside the rover.

The scoop now holding the precious sample is part of Curiosity's Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) device. During the next steps of processing, the powder will be enclosed inside CHIMRA and shaken once or twice over a sieve that screens out particles larger than 0.006 inch (150 microns) across.

Small portions of the sieved sample later will be delivered through inlet ports on top of the rover deck into the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument.

In response to information gained during testing at JPL, the processing and delivery plan has been adjusted to reduce use of mechanical vibration. The 150-micron screen in one of the two test versions of CHIMRA became partially detached after extensive use, although it remained usable. The team has added precautions for use of Curiosity's sampling system while continuing to study the cause and ramifications of the separation.

The sample comes from a fine-grained, veiny sedimentary rock called "John Klein," named in memory of a Mars Science Laboratory deputy project manager who died in 2011. The rock was selected for the first sample drilling because it may hold evidence of wet environmental conditions long ago. The rover's laboratory analysis of the powder may provide information about those conditions.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using the Curiosity rover with its 10 science instruments to investigate whether an area within Mars' Gale Crater ever has offered an environment favorable for microbial life. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

An image of the drill's rock powder held in the scoop is online at:

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16729

Animation of drilling HERE

SOURCES