NASA held a media teleconference Wednesday, Feb. 20 to announce the Mars Science Laboratory's discoveries on Mars.
The event featured presentations from five members of the Curiosity team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Scott McCloskey, rover planner and drill systems engineer; Avi Okun, rover planner and drill cognizant engineer; Louise Jandura, sample system chief engineer; Daniel Limonadi, lead systems engineer for Curiosity's surface sampling and science system and Joel Hurowitz, sample system scientist, presented their findings and answered reporters' questions.
The five presented images, animations and videos of the rover drilling and collecting a sample of Martian rock. McCloskey said the sample was "about a tablespoon of powder." He also described the drilling as "a complete success." The team has yet to test the sample, but will transfer the powder into its CheMin and SAM laboratories soon.
"We're going to sieve the material next, for about 20 minutes, then drop it into CheMin then SAM. That will play out in the next few days," said Limonadi. The CheMin (short for "chemistry and mineralogy") lab is an X-ray diffraction and X-ray fluorescence analyzer that will determine what minerals are present in the rock, and determine whether water was involved in its formation. The SAM ("sample analysis at Mars") lab will test the sample for organic compounds.
Testing the sample's composition will reveal a lot, the scientists say. Jandura described the rover's drilling as "unlocking a time capsule of Mars." Hurowitz mentioned that the team was "pretty confident" that the sample contained calcium sulphate and that "the rocks in this area have a very rich geological history."
When asked about the drill's capabilities, Okun described the safeguards set in place to protect the drill from getting in over its head. There are rocks the drill can't penetrate (Okun mentioned quartz), but there is software in place, as well as sensors on the drill, that can determine if a rock is too hard to drill.
The rover's next drill site is still up in the air, and will depend on what the team finds in the analyzed sample. Curiosity won't find something else to drill until the team determines the mineralogy of the current sample.
