In a first for interplanetary exploration, NASA engineers said Wednesday that the $2.5 billion Curiosity robot rover successfully mined material from inside a rock on Mars, advancing the agency's search for conditions once favorable for microbial life.
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ReutersNASA's Curiosity rover is in its sixth month on Mars; this self-portrait was made by combining dozens of exposures taken by the rover's cameras.
Held in a scoop on the rover's mechanical arm, the tablespoon of pulverized gray rock offers planetary scientists their first sample from the planet's interior, where it may have been sheltered from the harsh surface chemistry and ultra-violet radiation. It may be several weeks before they can analyze the powder using the craft's onboard chemical test-kit.
"This is the first time any robot has drilled in any rock on Mars" or anywhere else beyond Earth, said Louise Jandura, chief engineer for Curiosity's sample system at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
The sample comes from a hole about 2.5 inches deep drilled on Feb. 8 in a flat plate of sedimentary bedrock that the space agency managers have named "John Klein" in memory of a Mars Science Laboratory deputy project manager who died in 2011. They picked the rock in Gale Crater, which the robot has been exploring since it landed there on Aug. 5, because they hope it holds evidence of wet environmental conditions long ago.
"The rocks in this area have a really rich geological history," said sampling-system scientist Joel Hurowitz at JPL. "This is reason for us to be pretty excited here."
To complete the drilling without mishap, the rover's operators on Earth had to devise new procedures to solve a series of computer software problems that affected the craft's motor's control systems, said JPL drill-systems engineer Scott McCloskey. They are also worried about potential problems with the welds that hold the scoop together.
"None of these caused any harm to the rover," he said.
Write to Robert Lee Hotz at sciencejournal@wsj.com
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