Posted on by Ken Kremer

Curiosity Set for 1st Martian Scooping at ‘Rocknest’ Ripple

Image caption: Context view of Curiosity working at ‘Rocknest’ Ripple. Curiosity’s maneuvers robotic arm for close- up examination of ‘Rocknest’ ripple site and inspects sandy material at “bootlike” wheel scuff mark with the APXS (Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer) and MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager) instruments positioned on the rotatable turret at the arm’s terminus. Mosaic was stitched together from Sol 57 & 58 Navcam raw images and shows the arm extended to fine grained sand ripple in context with the surrounding terrain and eroded rim of Gale Crater rim on the horizon. Rocknest patch measures about 8 feet by 16 feet (2.5 meters by 5 meters).See NASA JPL test scooping video below. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

NASA’s Curiosity rover is set to scoop up her 1st sample of Martian soil this weekend at a soil patch nicknamed ‘Rocknest’ -see our context mosaic above – and will funtion as a sort of circulatory system cleanser for all the critical samples to follow. This marks a major milestone on the path to delivering Mars material to the sample acquisition and processing system for high powered analysis by the robots chemistry labs and looking for the ingredients of life, said the science and engineering team leading the mission at a media briefing on Thursday, Oct 4.

Since landing on the Red Planet two months ago on Aug. 5/6, Curiosity has trekked over 500 yards eastwards across Gale crater towards an intriguing area named “Glenelg” where three different types of geologic terrain intersect.

This week on Oct. 2 (Sol 56), the rover finally found a wind driven patch of dunes at ‘Rocknest’ with exactly the type of fine grained sand that the team was looking for and that’s best suited as the first soil to scoop and injest into the sample acquisition system.

See NASA JPL earthly test scooping video below to visualize how it works:

“We now have reached an important phase that will get the first solid samples into the analytical instruments in about two weeks,” said Mission Manager Michael Watkins of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The rover used its wheels to purposely scuff the sand and expose fresh soil – and it sure looked like the first human “bootprint” left on the Moon by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

Curiosity will remain at the “Rocknest” location for the next two to three weeks as the team fully tests and cleans the walls of most of the sample collection, handling and analysis hardware – except for the drilling equipment – specifically to remove residual contaminants from Earth.

Image caption: ‘Rocknest’ From Sol 52 Location on Sept. 28, 2012, four sols before the rover arrived at Rocknest. The Rocknest patch is about 8 feet by 16 feet (1.5 meters by 5 meters). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The purpose of this initial scoop is to use the sandy material to thoroughly clean out, rinse and scrub all the plumbing pipes, chambers, labyrinths and interfaces housed inside the complex CHIMRA sampling system and the SAM and CheMin chemistry labs of an accumulation of a very thin and fine oily layer that could cause spurious, interfering readings when the truly important samples of Martian soil and rocks are collected for analysis starting in the near future.

The scientists especially do not want any false signals of organic compounds or other inorganic materials and minerals stemming from Earthly contamination while the rover and its instruments were assembled together and processed for launch.

“Even though we make this hardware super squeaky clean when it’s delivered and assembled at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, by virtue of its just being on Earth you get a kind of residual oily film that is impossible to avoid,” said Daniel Limonadi of JPL, lead systems engineer for Curiosity’s surface sampling and science system. “And the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument is so sensitive we really have to scrub away this layer of oils that accumulates on Earth.”

The team plans to conduct three scoop and rinse trials – dubbed rinse and discard – of the sample acquisition systems. So it won’t be until the 3rd and 4th soil scooping at Rocknest that a Martian sample would actually be delivered for entry into the SAM and CheMin analytical chemistry instruments located on the rover deck.

“What we’re doing at the site is we take the sand sample, this fine-grained material and we effectively use it to rinse our mouth three times and then kind of spit out,” Limonadi said. “We will take a scoop, we will vibrate that sand on all the different surfaces inside CHIMRA to effectively sand-blast those surfaces, then we dump that material out and we rinse and repeat three times to finish cleaning everything out. Our Earth-based testing has found that to be super effective at cleaning.”

Limondi said the first scooping is likely to be run this Saturday (Oct 6) on Sol 61, if things proceed as planned. Scoop samples will be vibrated at 8 G’s to break them down to a very fine particle size that can be easily passed through a 150 micron sieve before entering the analytical instruments.

The team is being cautious, allowing plenty of margin time and will not proceed forward with undue haste.

“We’re being deliberately slow and incredibly careful,” said Watkins. “We’re taking a lot of extra steps here to make sure we understand exactly what’s going on, that we won’t have to do every time we do a scoop in the future.”

Curiosity’s motorized, clamshell-shaped scoop measures 1.8 inches (4.5 centimeters) wide, 2.8 inches (7 centimeters) long, and can sample to a depth of about 1.4 inches (3.5 centimeters). It is part of the CHIMRA collection and handling device located on the tool turret at the end of the rover’s arm.

“The scoop is about the size of an oversized table spoon,” said Limonadi.

Image caption: Curiosity extends 7 foot long arm to investigate ‘Bathurst Inlet’ rock outcrop with the MAHLI camera and APXS chemical element spectrometer in this mosaic of Navcam images assembled from Sols 53 & 54 (Sept. 29 & 30, 2012). Mount Sharp, the rover’s eventual destination is visible on the horizon. Thereafter the rover drove more than 77 feet (23 meters) eastwards to reach the ‘Rocknest’ sand ripple. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

During the lengthy stay at Rocknest, the rover will conduct extensive investigations of the surrounding rocks and terrain with the cameras, ChemCam laser, DAN, RAD as well as weather monitoring with the REMS instrument.

After finishing her work at Rocknest, Curiosity will resume driving eastward to Glenelg, some 100 meters (yards) away where the team will select the first targets and rock outcrops to drill, sample and analyze.

At Glenelg and elsewhere, researchers hope to find more evidence for the ancient Martian stream bed they discovered at rock outcrops at three different locations that Curiosity has already visited.

Curiosity is searching for organic molecules and evidence of potential habitable environments to determine whether Mars could have supported Martian microbial life forms, past or present.

Ken Kremer

Image caption: Curiosity’s Travels Through Sol 56 – Oct. 2, 2012

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Curiosity’s “Bootprint” on Mars

Looking very similar to the iconic first footprint on the Moon from the Apollo 11 landing, this new raw image from the Curiosity rover on Mars shows one of the first “scuff” marks from the rover’s wheels on a small sandy ridge. This image was taken today by Curiosity’s right Navcam on Sol 57 (2012-10-03 19:08:27 UTC). Rover driver Matt Heverly described a scuff as spinning one wheel to move the soil below it out of the way.

Besides being on different worlds, the two prints likely have a very different future. NASA says the first footprints on the Moon will be there for a million years, since there is no wind to blow them away. Research on the tracks left by Spirit and Opportunity revealed the time scale for track erasure by wind is typically only one Martian year or two Earth years.

Here’s one of Buzz Aldrin’s bootprint, to compare:

The GRIN website (Great Images in NASA) says this is an image of Buzz Aldrin’s bootprint from the Apollo 11 mission. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Credit: NASA

Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger compared earlier images of some of the first tracks left on Mars by Curiosity to images of the footprints left by Aldrin and Armstrong on the Moon. “I think instead of a human, it’s a robot pretty much doing the same thing,” he said.

Lead Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Posted on by Ken Kremer

Roving Curiosity at Work on Mars Searching for Ingredients of Life

Image Caption: Curiosity at work on Mars inside Gale Crater. Panoramic mosaic showing Curiosity in action with her wheel tracks and the surrounding terrain snapped from the location the rover drove to on Sol 29 (Sept 4). The time lapse imagery highlights post drive wheel tracks at left, movement of the robotic arm from the stowed to deployed position with pointing instrument turret at right with Mt Sharp and a self portrait of Curiosity’s instrument packed deck top at center. This colorized mosaic was assembled from navigation camera (Navcam) images taken over multiple Martian days while stationary beginning on Sol 29. Click to Enlarge. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

NASA’s Mega Martian Rover Curiosity is swiftly trekking across the Red Planet’s science rich terrain inside Gale Crater as she approaches the two month anniversary since the daring atmospheric plunge and pinpoint touchdown on Aug. 5/6 beside her eventual destination of the richly layered mountainside of Mount Sharp.

In this ultra short span of time, Curiosity has already fulfilled on her stated goal of seeking the signs of life and potentially habitable environments by discovering evidence for an ancient Martian stream bed at three different locations – at the landing site and stops along her traverse route – where hip deep liquid water once vigorously flowed billions of years ago. Liquid water is a prerequisite for the origin of life.

Curiosity discovered a trio of outcrops of stones cemented into a layer of conglomerate rock – initially at “Goulburn” scour as exposed by the landing thrusters and later at the “Link” and “Hottah” outcrops during the first 40 sols of the mission.

If they find another water related outcrop, Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Project Manager John Grotzinger told me that the robotic arm will be deployed to examine it.

“We would do all the arm-based contact science first, and then make the decision on whether to drill. If we’re still uncertain, then we still have time to deliberate,” Grotzinger told me.

Image caption: Remnants of Ancient Streambed on Mars. NASA’s Curiosity rover found evidence for an ancient, flowing stream on Mars at a few sites, including the rock outcrop pictured here, which the science team has named “Hottah” after Hottah Lake in Canada’s Northwest Territories. It may look like a broken sidewalk, but this geological feature on Mars is actually exposed bedrock made up of smaller fragments cemented together, or what geologists call a sedimentary conglomerate. Scientists theorize that the bedrock was disrupted in the past, giving it the titled angle, most likely via impacts from meteorites. This image mosaic was taken by the 100-millimeter Mastcam telephoto lens on Sol 39 (Sept. 14, 2012). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

“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,” said Curiosity science co-investigator William Dietrich of the University of California, Berkeley.

Image Caption: Curiosity conducts 1st contact science experiment at “Jake” rock on Mars. This 360 degree panoramic mosaic of images from Sols 44 to 47 (Sept 20-23) shows Curiosity arriving near Jake rock on Sol 44. The robot then drove closer. Inset image from Sol 47 shows the robotic arm extended to place the science instruments on the rock and carry out the first detailed contact science examination of a Martian rock with the equipment positioned on the turret at the arms terminus. Jake rock is named in honor of recently deceased team member Jake Matijevic. This mosaic was created in tribute to Jake and his outstanding contributions. Click to Enlarge. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

The one-ton robot soon departed from her touchdown vicinity at “Bradbury Landing” and set off on a multi-week eastwards traverse to her first science target which the team has dubbed “Glenelg”.

See our panoramic Curiosity mosaics herein showing the rovers movements on various Sols as created by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo from NASA raw images.

Curiosity is also now closing in on the spot from which she will reach out with the advanced 7 foot long (2.1 meter) robotic arm to scoop up her very first Martian soil material and deliver samples to the on board chemistry labs.

At a Sept. 27 briefing for reporters, Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., said the team hopes to find a suitable location to collect loose, gravelly Martian soil within the next few sols that can be easily sifted into the analytical labs. Curiosity will then spend about 2 or 3 weeks investigating the precious material and her surroundings, before continuing on to Glenelg.

The science team chose Glenelg as the first target for detailed investigation because it sits at the intersection of three distinct types of geologic terrain, affording the researchers the opportunity to comprehensively explore the diverse geology inside the Gale Crater landing site long before arriving at the base of Mount Sharp. That’s important because the rover team estimates it will take a year or more before Curiosity reaches Mount Sharp, which lies some 10 kilometers (6 miles) away as the Martian crow flies.

As of today, Sol 53, Curiosity has driven a total distance of 0.28 mile (0.45 kilometer) or more than ¾ of the way towards Glenelg. Yestersol (Sol 52), the six wheeled robot drove about 122 feet (37.3 meters) toward the Glenelg area and is using visual odometry to assess her progress and adjust for any wheel slippage that could hint at sand traps or other dangerous obstacles.

The longest drive to date just occurred on Sol 50 with the robot rolling about 160 feet (48.9 meters).

Curiosity recently conducted her first detailed rock contact science investigation with the robotic arm at a rock named “Jake”, in honor of Jake Matijevic, a recently deceased MSL team member who played a key and leading role on all 3 generations of NASA’s Mars rovers. See our 360 degree panoramic “Jake rock” mosaic created in tribute to Jake Matijevic.

Curiosity is searching for hydrated minerals, organic molecules and signs of habitats favorable for past or present microbial life on Mars.

Ken Kremer

Image Caption: “Hottah” water related outcrop. Context mosaic shows location of Hottah” outcrop (bottom right) sticking out from the floor of Gale Crater as imaged by Curiosity Navcam on Sol 38 with Mount Sharp in the background. The Glenelg science target lies in the terrain towards Mt Sharp. This is what an astronaut geologist would see on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

Alluvial Fan Where Water Flowed Downslope. This image shows the topography, with shading added, around the area where NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT). 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.An alluvial fan, or fan-shaped deposit where debris spreads out downslope, has been highlighted in lighter colors for better viewing. On Earth, alluvial fans often are formed by water flowing downslope. New observations from Curiosity of rounded pebbles embedded with rocky outcrops provide concrete evidence that water did flow in this region on Mars, creating the alluvial fan. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UofA

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Curiosity Finds Evidence of An Ancient Streambed on Mars

NASA’s Curiosity rover found evidence for an ancient, flowing stream on Mars at a few sites, including the rock outcrop pictured here, which the science team has named “Hottah” after Hottah Lake in Canada’s Northwest Territories. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech

The Curiosity rover has come across a place in Gale Crater where ankle-to-hip-deep water once vigorously flowed: an ancient streambed containing evidence of gravel that has been worn by water. At a press briefing today, members of the Mars Science Laboratory team said the rover has found “surprising” outcrops and gravel near the rover landing site that indicate water once flowed in this region, and likely flowed for a long time.

“Too many things that point away from a single burst event,” said Curiosity science co-investigator William Dietrich of the University of California, Berkeley. “I’m comfortable to argue that it is beyond the 1,000 year timescales, even though this is very early on in our findings.”

This set of images compares the Link outcrop of rocks on Mars (left) with similar rocks seen on Earth (right). Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech

From the size of gravel found by the rover, the science team can interpret the water was moving about 1 meter (3 feet) per second, with 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,” said Dietrich. “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.”

What Curiosity found on Mars was described as conglomerate rock made up of water-transported gravels, meaning the gravel is now cemented into a layers of rock, and the sizes and shapes of stones offer clues to the speed and distance of a long-ago stream’s flow.

“The shapes tell you they were transported and the sizes tell you they couldn’t be transported by wind. They were transported by water flow,” said Curiosity science co-investigator Rebecca Williams of the Planetary Science Institute.

The discovery comes from examining two outcrops, called “Hottah” and “Link,” with the telephoto capability of Curiosity’s mast camera during the first 40 days after landing. Those observations followed up on earlier hints from another outcrop, named Goulburn, which was exposed by thruster exhaust as Curiosity touched down.

“Hottah looks like someone jack-hammered up a slab of city sidewalk, but it’s really a tilted block of an ancient streambed,” said Mars Science Laboratory Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology.

An alluvial fan, or fan-shaped deposit where debris spreads out downslope are usually formed by water, and new observations from Curiosity of rounded pebbles embedded with rocky outcrops provide concrete evidence that water did flow in this region on Mars. Elevation data were obtained from stereo processing of images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UofA

Even though the team classified the finding as “surprising,” they later said they actually weren’t too surprised at what they found so early in the mission – just 51 sols, or Martian days, in.

“We are getting better about integrating the orbital data,” said Grotzinger. “We see an alluvial fan and debris flow from orbit, and then see these water-transported pebbles from the ground. This is not rocket science, but shows exactly the reason we chose this landing site, and you build on those foundations you think you are mostly likely to establish. Now we’ll look at more rocks and get more context to recreate the environment in greater detail along with understanding the chemistry of the time to see if this is a place that could be habitable.”

Asked if it was hard to come to consensus on this long-term, quickly flowing water statement, given the large number of scientists involved with the mission, Grotziner said, “Given the evidence we have from orbit that has been analyzed, when we arrive with a robot we can test the hypothesis pretty quickly. If the geological signal for this process is large enough, it is easy to achieve a consensus pretty quickly.”

The finding site lies between the north rim of Gale Crater and the base of Aeolis Mons, or Mount Sharp, a mountain inside the crater. To the north of the crater, a channel named Peace Vallis feeds into the alluvial fan. The abundance of channels in the fan between the rim and conglomerate suggests flows continued or repeated over a long time, not just once or for a few years, the science team said.

But interestingly, the rover has already moved on from this spot, and yesterday took the longest drive yet, of between 52-53 meters, heading towards the Glenelg region where they want to do their first scooping and tests soil samples in Curiosity’s two instruments, SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) and ChemMin (Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction/X-Ray Fluorescence Instrument). These two experiments will study powdered rock and soil samples scooped up by the robotic arm.

The Glenelg area marks the intersection of three kinds of terrain: bedrock for drilling, several small craters that may represent an older or harder surface, and also terrain similar to where Curiosity landed, so the science team can do comparisons.

“A long-flowing stream can be a habitable environment,” said Grotzinger. “But it is not our top choice as there might be other places that have preserved organic carbon better than this, and we need to assess the potential for preservation of organics. We’re still going to Mount Sharp, but this is insurance that we have already found our first potentially habitable environment.”

The slope of Aeolis Mons contains clay and sulfate minerals, which have been detected from orbit. This can be good preservers of carbon-based organic chemicals that are potential ingredients for life.

As for what’s next for Curiosity, Grotzinger said they have a couple of targets in the next 2-4 sols, and then they will park for a long period of time, about 2-3 weeks to prepare for reaching Glenelg. “This is such a complex set of processes that have never been done on Mars before, so we are going to be conservative and go slowly to make sure everything is working as it should. Then we’ll go to Glenelg and choose first candidate for drilling.”

This map shows the path on Mars of NASA’s Curiosity rover toward Glenelg. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech/University of Arizona

Sources: Press briefing, NASA press release

Posted on by Jason Major

A Crescent Moon in the Martian Sky

Raw image of Phobos above Mars, taken by Curiosity's Mastcam in September 2012. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mars’ moon Phobos is captured in a daytime image by Curiosity (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

A raw image taken on September 21 by Curiosity’s right Mastcam shows a daytime view of the Martian sky with a crescent-lit Phobos in the frame… barely visible, yes, but most certainly there. Very cool!

The image above is a crop of the original, contrast-enhanced and sharpened to bring out as much detail as possible.

The 13-km-wide Phobos has been spotted several times before by Mars rovers, most recently during a solar transit on September 13 (sol 37) but I’m not sure if it’s ever been clearly captured on camera during the day before (i.e., not passing in front of the Sun.) If not, this will be a first!

See the latest news from the Curiosity mission here.

Added 9/28: According to Universe Today publisher Fraser Cain, this is “the most dramatic space picture of the year”… whether you agree or not, hear what he had to say on this and other recent news during the September 27 episode of the Weekly Space Hangout.

Posted on by Jason Major

Curiosity Shows Off Its Credentials

Plaque on the exterior of Mars Science Laboratory, aka “Curiosity” (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

Curiosity drops a few rather big names in recent images taken with its MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager) camera: here we see a plaque affixed to its surface bearing the names and signatures of U.S. President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Office of Science and Technology Director John Holdren, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and other key figures responsible for making the Mars Exploration Program possible.

You never know… even on another planet it can’t hurt to have friends in high places!

The image was captured by MAHLI on September 19, the 44th sol of the MSL mission. (See the original raw downlink here.)

The rectangular plaque is made of anodized aluminum, measuring 3.94 inches (100 mm) high by 3.23 inches (82 mm) wide. It’s attached to the front left side of Curiosity’s deck with four bolts. (Explore Curiosity in 3D here.)

Dust, pebbles and variously-sized bits of Mars can be seen scattered around the plaque and deck, leftover detritus from the rover’s landing.

The complete list of signatures is:

Barack Obama, President, United States of America

Joe Biden, Vice President

John P. Holdren, Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy

Charles F. Bolden, Jr., Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Edward J. Weiler, Associate Administrator, Science Mission Directorate (2008–2011)

James Green, Director, Planetary Sciences Division

Doug McCuistion, Director, Mars Exploration Program

Michael Meyer, Program Scientist, Mars Exploration Program

David Lavery, Program Executive, Mars Science Laboratory

In another image taken on the same sol, Curiosity shows some national pride with a circular medallion decorated with the stars and stripes of the American flag. The 68-mm-wide circular aluminum plate is affixed to one of the rover’s rocker arms. It’s just one of its four “mobility logos” — the others having the NASA logo, the JPL logo and the Curiosity mission logo.

Curiosity’s “stars and stripes” American flag mobility logo (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

The main purpose of Curiosity’s MAHLI camera is to acquire close-up, high-resolution views of rocks and soil at the rover’s Gale Crater field site. Developed for NASA by Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, CA, the camera is capable of focusing on any target at distances of about 0.8 inch (2.1 centimeters) to infinity, providing versatility for other uses, such as views of the rover itself from different angles.

Get more technical information about the MAHLI camera here.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Weird Mars Rock Has Interesting Back Story

The rock chosen for the first contact science investigations for the Curiosity rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The rock chosen for the first contact science investigations for the Curiosity rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Mars Science Laboratory team has identified their target for the first full-up contact science investigations using all the instruments attached to the Curiosity rover’s robotic arm. And ‘target’ is the operative word here, as this rock will be shot with Curiosity’s laser to help determine it chemical makeup. Interestingly, it has an unusual pyramid shape, and it was described as a “cool-looking rock sitting out on the plains of Mars,” by MSL project scientist John Grotzinger. But the rock now has a name, and while we don’t know everything about it yet, like its namesake, this rock likely has a very interesting back story.


The rock has been dubbed “Jake Matijevic,” named for the surface operations systems engineer for all the Mars rover missions so far. But unfortunately, Matijevic passed away at age 64 just days after Curiosity touched down on Mars last month. Matijevic was one of the original technology developers for rovers on Mars — figuring out how to link the mechanics, avionics and all the systems together. He led the surface operations for the Sojourner rover in 1996, worked for years with the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, and was instrumental in getting the Curiosity rover ready for its mission.

Matijevic originally was a mathematician and he developed the Matijevic Theorem, which MSL’s John Cook described as “an obscure mathematical theorem” but others have said it was “one of the most beautiful results of recent years in commutative algebra.”

“To honor Jake and his contributions we’ve named the first rock where we’re going to do contact science after him,” said Grotzinger.

The rock named Jake is about 25 centimeters (10 inches) tall and 40 cm (16 in) wide at the base, so it’s not a very large rock, nor is it very eccentric. It likely is a shapely lump of basic basalt ejecta. It is uniform in color and is actually similar in size, shape and composition to the first rock studied by the Spirit rover over eight years ago. But being a rather ordinary rock is a good thing, said Grotzinger.

“The science team has had interest for some time to find a rock that is relatively uniform in composition to do comparisons,” between the ChemCam (the laser-zapper tool) and the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS), Grotziner said, to calibrate both instruments, especially the ChemCam, which is a new version of an instrument that is on the MER rovers.

“Here we get to really test a comparison between something that is tried and true with the latest and greatest technology,” he said.

Grotziner noted that most of the terrain they are seeing so far in Gale Crater has a rather uniform surface soil with some bedrock peeking out occasionally. But darker rocks like Jake, just sitting on the surface, are not quite so common. So how did Jake get there?
“Our general consensus is that it might be a piece of secondary of impact ejecta, maybe from an impact somewhere else, maybe outside of Gale Crater,” Grotziner said, “where a rock was thrown into Gale Crater and it has just sat there for a long time. It appears to have weathered more slowly than the stuff that’s around it, so that means it’s probably a harder rock.”

So a rock blasted from a huge impact on another location on Mars ends up sitting in Gale Crater where the Curiosity rover is going to zap it with a laser.

Oh, the stories this rock will be able to tell. And hopefully the instruments on Curiosity will allow the rock to divulge its secrets.

This map shows the route driven by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity through the 43rd Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s mission on Mars (Sept. 19, 2012). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Posted on by Jason Major

Curiosity Captures a Martian Eclipse

Yes, Mars gets eclipses too! This brief animation, made from ten raw subframe images acquired with Curiosity’s Mastcam on September 13 — the 37th Sol of the mission — show the silhouette of Mars’ moon Phobos as it slipped in front of the Sun’s limb.

The entire animation spans a real time of about 2 minutes.

As a moon Phobos really is an oddity. In addition to its small size – only 8 miles (13 km) across at its widest – and irregular shape, it also orbits its parent planet at a very low altitude, only 5,840 miles (9,400 km) and thus needs to travel at a relatively high velocity in order to even stay in orbit. Phobos actually orbits Mars over three times faster than Mars rotates, appearing to rise in Mars’ western sky. And its orbit is so low that it can’t even be seen from the polar regions!

Since Phobos, and its even more petite sibling Deimos, are so small, the Mars rovers won’t ever see a total solar eclipse. In fact these events are often referred to as transits rather than actual eclipses.

This isn’t the first time an eclipse was captured by a Mars Exploration Rover; Opportunity witnessed a similar partial eclipse of the Sun by Phobos in December 2010, and Spirit caught a lunar (or “Phobal?”) eclipse on camera back in 2005, when the moon passed into the shadow of Mars.

Curiosity’s find was no accident, either, as mission engineers had the Mastcam already positioned to capture the event. Preparation really pays off!

See the latest images and news from the MSL mission here.

Images: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems. Animation by Jason Major. Inset image: Phobos as seen by Mars Express ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

UPDATE 9/19/12: See a close-up animation of the eclipse event here.

Posted on by Jason Major

In Fact It’s Cold As Hell: Mars Isn’t As Earthlike As It Might Look

The slopes of Gale Crater as seen by Curiosity are reminiscent of the American southwest (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

“Mars ain’t no kind of place to raise your kids; in fact it’s cold as hell” sang Elton John in “Rocket Man”, and although the song was released in 1972 — four years before the first successful landing on Mars — his weather forecast was spot-on. Even though the fantastic images that are being returned from NASA’s Curiosity rover show a rocky, ruddy landscape that could easily be mistaken for an arid region of the American Southwest one must remember three things: this is Mars, we’re looking around the inside of an impact crater billions of years old, and it’s cold out there.

Mars Exploration Program blogger Jeffrey Marlow writes in his latest “Martian Diaries” post:

Over the first 30 sols, air temperature has ranged from approximately -103 degrees Fahrenheit (-75 Celsius) at night to roughly 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 Celsius) in the afternoon. Two factors conspire to cause such a wide daily range (most day-night fluctuations on Earth are about 10 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit). The martian atmosphere is very thin; with fewer molecules in the air to heat up and cool down, there’s more solar power to go around during the day, and less atmospheric warmth at night, so the magnitude of temperature shifts is amplified. There is also very little water vapor; water is particularly good at retaining its heat, and the dryness makes the temperature swings even more pronounced. 

In that way Mars is like an Earthly desert; even after a blisteringly hot day the temperatures can plummet at night, leaving an ill-prepared camper shivering beneath the cold glow of starlight. Except on Mars, where the Sun is only 50% as bright as on Earth and the atmosphere only 1% as dense, the nighttime lows dip to Arctic depths.

“Deserts on Earth have very extreme temperature ranges,” says Mars Science Laboratory Deputy Project Scientist, Ashwin Vasavada. “So if you take a desert on Earth and put it in a very thin atmosphere 50% farther from the Sun, you’d have something like what we’re seeing at Gale Crater.”

And although the afternoon temperatures in Gale may climb slightly above freezing that doesn’t mean liquid water will be found pooling about in any large amounts. Curiosity’s in no danger from flash floods on Mars… not these days, anyway.

With atmospheric pressure just above water’s thermodynamic triple point, and temperatures occasionally hovering around the freezing point, it is likely that local niches are seeing above-zero temperatures, and Vasavada acknowledges, “liquid water could exist here over a tiny range of conditions.” But don’t expect a Culligan water plant in Gale Crater any time soon. “We wouldn’t expect for Curiosity to see liquid water, because it would evaporate or re-freeze too quickly,” explains Vasavada. “With so little water vapor in the atmosphere, any liquid water molecules on the surface would quickly turn to gas.”

So when on Mars, drink your coffee quickly. (And pack a blanket.)

“Gale Crater may look like the dusty, basaltic basins of the American southwest, but one look at the thermometer will send you running for the winter coat.”

– Jeffrey Marlow, Martian Diaries

Read Marlow’s full article here.

Image: Sunset on Mars seen by the MER Spirit from Gusev Crater in 2005 (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Posted on by John Williams

Say Ahhh to Mars

Take a deep breath because this new panorama from Mars enthusiast Stu Atkinson will take it away.

“Anyway, a whole bunch of these came down, like I said, and to my delight they all linked up to form a big, biiiiiiiig panoramic mosaic,” said Stu on his blog “The Gale Gazette.” “And here it is. Obviously you’ll need to click on it to enlarge it… and I’ll warn you, it’s a big image, you can kiss the next few minutes goodbye because you’ll be panning around it for a while…”

Zoom in and you can see actual rocks. Click that little button at the right of the toolbar and Mars will take over your screen.

So far, Curiosity has rolled across a barely dusty plain in Gale Crater. Here’s a look of things to come. In black-and-white image from Curiosity, there appear to be big dunes to cross to get to the foothills of Aeolis Mons, or Mount Sharp.

A black-and-white but still breathtaking view of the dusty terrain between Curiosity’s current location and the foothills of Aeolis Mons, or Mount Sharp. Credit: NASA/JPL/Stu Atkinson

Curiosity has nearly finished robotic arm tests. Once complete, the rover will be able to touch and examine its first Mars rock.

“We’re about to drive some more and try to find the right rock to begin doing contact science with the arm,” said Jennifer Trosper, Curiosity mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif, in a press release.

This image from NASA’s Curiosity rover shows the open inlet where powered rock and soil samples will be funneled down for analysis. It was taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on Curiosity’s 36th Martian day, or sol, of operations on Mars (Sept. 11, 2012). MAHLI was about 8 inches (20 centimeters) away from the mouth of the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument when it took the picture. The entrance of the funnel is about 1.4 inches (3.5 centimeters) in diameter. The mesh screen is about 2.3 inches (5.9 centimeters) deep. The mesh size is 0.04 inches (1 millimeter). Once the samples have gone down the funnel, CheMin will be shooting X-rays at the samples to identify and quantify the minerals.

Engineers and scientists use images like these to check out Curiosity’s instruments. This image is a composite of eight MAHLI pictures acquired at different focus positions and merged onboard the instrument before transmission to Earth; this is the first time the MAHLI performed this technique since arriving at Curiosity’s field site inside Gale Crater. The image also shows angular and rounded pebbles and sand that were deposited on the rover deck during landing on Aug. 5, 2012 PDT (Aug. 6, 2012 EDT).

Two science instruments, a camera called Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI, that can take close-up color images and a tool called Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) that can determine the elemental composition of a rock, also have passed tests. The instruments are mounted on a turret at the end of the robotic arm and can be placed in contact with target rocks. The adjustable focus MAHLI camera produced images this week of objects near and far; of the underbelly of Curiosity, across inlet ports and a penny that serves as a calibration target on the rover.

This close-up image shows tiny grains of Martian sand that settled on the penny that serves as a calibration target on NASA’s Curiosity rover. The larger grain under Abraham Lincoln’s ear is about 0.2 millimeters across. The grains are classified as fine to very fine sand.

The Mars Hand Lens Imagery (MAHLI) on the Curiosity rover taken by the Mast Camera on the 32nd Martian day, or sol, of operations on the surface. Engineers imaged MAHLI to inspect the dust cover and to ensure that the tool’s LED lights are functional. Scientists enhanced the image to show the scene as it would appear under Earth’s lighting conditions. This helps in analyzing the background terrain.

Check out more images from the Mars Science Laboratory teleconference.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS