Mars Mission: Curiosity - Page 60

On November 30 2012 20:22 ApocAlypsE007 wrote:
So now NASA is backpedaling. How nice. It's either they have found nothing or they found something so big it's in the interest of US government to hide it.

On December 01 2012 00:24 S:klogW wrote:
Very bad PR from NASA. I guess that's what the Messenger bit about water on Mercury now is about, a distraction from this utter mess in the media.

On November 30 2012 20:22 ApocAlypsE007 wrote:
So now NASA is backpedaling. How nice. It's either they have found nothing or they found something so big it's in the interest of US government to hide it.

On December 04 2012 03:18 nolook wrote:


A secret Soviet space colony that lost communication and was removed from archives in 1992

Building on the success of Curiosity's Red Planet landing, NASA has announced plans for a robust multi-year Mars program, including a new robotic science rover set to launch in 2020. This announcement affirms the agency's commitment to a bold exploration program that meets our nation's scientific and human exploration objectives.

"The Obama administration is committed to a robust Mars exploration program," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "With this next mission, we're ensuring America remains the world leader in the exploration of the Red Planet, while taking another significant step toward sending humans there in the 2030s."

The planned portfolio includes the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers; two NASA spacecraft and contributions to one European spacecraft currently orbiting Mars; the 2013 launch of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter to study the Martian upper atmosphere; the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission, which will take the first look into the deep interior of Mars; and participation in ESA's 2016 and 2018 ExoMars missions, including providing "Electra" telecommunication radios to ESA's 2016 mission and a critical element of the premier astrobiology instrument on the 2018 ExoMars rover.

The plan to design and build a new Mars robotic science rover with a launch in 2020 comes only months after the agency announced InSight, which will launch in 2016, bringing a total of seven NASA missions operating or being planned to study and explore our Earth-like neighbor.

While using its robotic arm-mounted Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera to take some close up photos of the surface of a rocky outcrop at a location dubbed "Yellowknife Bay" on Dec. 19 (sol 132 of the mission), a bright object could be seen in one of the raw images uploaded to the mission's website. Its discovery has caused quite a stir on AboveTopSecret.com where it was first reported.

Alerted to the mystery feature, MSNBC's Alan Boyle assumed it was just another piece of litter accidentally dropped from the rover. However, this isn't the case. On putting the question to NASA spokesman Guy Webster, it appears initial analysis has confirmed it is part of the rock and not something dropped on top.

"That appears to be part of the rock, not debris from the spacecraft," Webster told Boyle in an email.

After weeks of searching, the Mars rover Curiosity's science and engineering teams have selected a fine-grained slab of Martian rock as the candidate target for the first rock drilling on Mars, a significant first in planetary exploration.

Rising out of the ground is an edge-on "snake like" protrusion of rock at a 90 degree angle to the flat exposed rocks that surrounds it and could have been formed in a lake bottom. Dubbed Snake River "It's one piece of a puzzle," said mission project scientist, John Grotzinger of Caltech. "It has a crosscutting relationship to the surrounding rock and appears to have formed after the deposition of the layer that it transects."



The Curiosity teams do not yet have Jet Propulsion Laboratory management permission to use the drill and when that drilling will actually start has yet to be decided.

That will come after additional engineering and scientific study of the rock candidate, which could be rejected if its suitability for drilling fails to pass final assessments.

The rock was selected Jan. 7 based on data about its composition, hardness, likelihood of generating powder needed to coat internal surfaces, and the safety of the drilling mechanism and rover when drilling this particular slab.

The candidate selection itself was a significant milestone, although that was kept secret for days for unknown reasons by the science team and JPL Public Affairs.

Since mid December, rover camera images and data from Curiosity's arm mounted Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and the powerful Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) were coupled with data from the mast mounted ChemCam laser-spectrometer to determine the elemental composition of potential targets in the Yellowknife Bay "triple-point" area.

This is where flat, light-toned rocks, possibly formed under water, have been overlaid in part by much darker material that could be volcanic basalts, which in turn have been overlaid in places by alluvial fan material.

Sources say the drilling candidate is not the same rock dusted off Jan. 6 on Sol 150 during the first use of the rover's Honeybee Robotics Dust Removal Tool (DRT).

On January 05 2013 14:10 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Gypsum?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gypsum





Source

Two powerful laboratories inside the Mars rover Curiosity are being readied to process the first powdered samples of subsurface Martian rock obtained by the rover's drill during the most complex series of Curiosity operations since its Sky Crane landing last August.

But there may be questions about whether the rock characteristics found during an initial shallow "mini-drill" test late February 6 are suitable for deeper drilling and sample acquisition.

As part of the laboratory preparation process, the $70 million Goddard Space Flight Center Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument processed a "blank cell" this week to calibrate the instrument for its first analysis of powered rock coming as quickly as this weekend or early next week if the current target is found suitable.

"We typically fire 30 shots or more into one pinpoint location. That is so we can get below the dust and into the rock and begin to see if there are any trends in the very top part of the rock. So that means the 12,000 shots collapse down into several hundred observation points," said Wiens.

"We tend to shoot 4-9 different observation points on a given target. That is also so we can see whether there is heterogeneity or whether the sample is quite homogeneous. So we often do up to nine observation points on any one target," he said.

"After we started to see sulfate veins in the John Klein area, we used these multiple observation points to march across a sulfate vein or to identify some small features better," Wiens said.

The ChemCam team started to see strong sulfate data back in October well before the rover got to Yellowknife Bay. The rocks had the same water related compositions, but the veins of calcium sulfate were not yet visible. When the rover got into the bay, distinct veins and nodules of calcium sulfate were visible.

"It was exciting for us because we were able to see this with our composition data long before we could see it with our eyes on the images. That tells us the importance of this operating technique," Wiens said.