[meteorite-list] Curiosity Rover Arm Delivers Rock Powder Sample

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4509

Rover Arm Delivers Rock Powder Sample
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
March 12, 2015

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its robotic arm Wednesday, March 11, 
to sieve and deliver a rock-powder sample to an onboard instrument. The 
sample was collected last month before the team temporarily suspended 
rover arm movement pending analysis of a short circuit.

The Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) analytical instrument inside the 
rover received the sample powder. This sample comes from a rock target 
called "Telegraph Peak," the third target drilled during about six months 
of investigating the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop on Mount Sharp. With this 
delivery completed, the rover team plans to drive Curiosity away from 
Pahrump Hills in coming days.

"That precious Telegraph Peak sample had been sitting in the arm, so tantalizingly 
close, for two weeks. We are really excited to get it delivered for analysis," 
said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion 
Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

The rover experienced a short circuit on Feb. 27 while using percussion 
action in its drill to shake sample powder from the drill into a sample-processing 
device on the arm. Subsequent testing at JPL and on Curiosity has identified 
the likely cause as a transient short in the motor for the drill's percussion 
action. During several tests on the rover in the past 10 days, the short 
was reproduced only one time -- on March 5. It lasted less than one one-hundredth 
of a second and did not stop the motor. Ongoing analysis will help the 
rover team develop guidelines for best use of the drill at future rock 
targets.

The rover's path toward higher layers of Mount Sharp will take it first 
through a valley called "Artist's Drive," heading southwestward from Pahrump 
Hills. The sample-processing device on the arm is carrying Telegraph Peak 
sample material at the start of the drive, for later delivery into the 
Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of instruments. The delivery will 
occur after SAM prepares for receiving the sample.

Curiosity's drill has used a combination of rotary and percussion action 
to collect samples from six rock targets since the rover landed inside 
Gale Crater in 2012. The first sampled rock, "John Klein," in the Yellowknife 
Bay area near the landing site, provided evidence for meeting the mission's 
primary science goal. Analysis of that sample showed that early Mars offered 
environmental conditions favorable for microbial life, including the key 
elemental ingredients for life and a chemical energy source such as used 
by some microbes on Earth. In the layers of lower Mount Sharp, the mission 
is pursuing evidence about how early Mars environments evolved from wetter 
to drier conditions.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, 
manages the Mars Science Laboratory project for NASA's Science Mission 
Directorate, Washington, and built the project's Curiosity rover. For 
more information about Curiosity, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/msl

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:

http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity

http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity


Media Contact

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov 

2015-087