NASA said it has completed a mini drill test in preparation for full drilling on Mars using the $2.5 billion Mars rover Curiosity. A 2 centimeter hole was made into a rock by the rover using percussion and rotation, completion of the test was confirmed on Wednesday by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory located in Pasadena, CA.
The Curiosity rover generated cuttings during the test that was performed on a patch of flat rock that scientists named "John Klein". The rover team will proceed with approving the first full drilling with the coming days, once the cuttings on the ground around the hole are evaluated. A visual evaluation will determine if the drill cuttings are suitable to be processed by the rover's mechanisms for obtaining samples. Wet environmental conditions were discovered before the mini drill test on the rock. It was determined that the area once had a flowing stream of water. The team will use to rover to learn more about the environmental history of the site and sample powder from the rock will be analyzed using Curiosity's 10 science laboratory instruments.
The planned full drilling will be the first rock drilling on Mars to collect a sample of material for analysis. NASA's Mars Science Laboratory two year mission will study the Gale Crater area of Mars to determine whether it has evidence of past and present environmental conditions for primitive microbial life. The studies will examine the atmosphere and surface of Mars and the mission's rover carries instruments, provides mobility over the land obtains samples to support the scientists' investigations.
The Mars Curiosity rover robot is about the size of a car and landed on the Gale Crater on Aug. 5. The Mars rover research team is made up of a diverse, international team of engineers and scientists. Each day, they make decisions about the rover's activities for the following day in order to make the best use of Curiosity's science capabilities. Scientists are interested in knowing if it's possible that life on Mars may have existed or not. Overall, the entire mission offers valuable information about the differences and similarities between Mars in its early years and the early years of Earth.
