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Resume Working with First Scooped Sample
by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (JPL) Oct 11, 2012

This pairing illustrates the first time that NASA's Mars rover Curiosity collected a scoop of soil on Mars. It combines two raw images taken on the mission's 61st Martian day, or sol (Oct. 7, 2012) by the right camera of the rover's two-camera Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument. The right Mastcam, or Mastcam-100, has a telephoto, 100-millimeter-focal-length lens. The image on the left shows the ground at the location "Rocknest" after the scoop of sand dna dust had been removed. The image on the right shows the material inside the rover's scoop, which is 1.8 inches (4.5 centimeters) wide, 2.8 inches (7 centimeters) long. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. For a larger version of this image please go here.

The team operating Curiosity decided on Oct. 9, 2012, to proceed with using the rover's first scoop of Martian material.

Plans for Sol 64 (Oct. 10) call for shifting the scoopful of sand and dust into the mechanism for sieving and portioning samples, and vibrating it vigorously to clean internal surfaces of the mechanism.

This first scooped sample, and the second one, will be discarded after use, since they are only being used for the cleaning process.

Subsequent samples scooped from the same "Rocknest" area will be delivered to analytical instruments.

Investigation of a small, bright object thought to have come from the rover may resume between the first and second scoop.

Over the past two sols, with rover arm activities on hold, the team has assessed the object as likely to be some type of plastic wrapper material, such as a tube used around a wire, possibly having fallen onto the rover from the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft's descent stage during the landing in August.

Sol 63 activities included extended weather measurements by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station, or REMS.

The Sol 63 planning also called for panoramic imaging by the Mast Camera, or Mastcam, in the early morning light of Sol 64, before uplink of Sol 64 commands.

A Sol 61 raw image from the right Mast Camera, at, shows the location from which Curiosity's first scoop of soil was collected.

Sol 63, in Mars local mean solar time at Gale Crater, ended at 1:03 a.m. Oct. 10, PDT (4:03 a.m., EDT)

Related Links
Mars Science Laboratory
Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com
Lunar Dreams and more




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MARSDAILY
Curiosity Update: Object Likely Benign Plastic from Curiosity Rover
Pasadena CA (JPL) Oct 10, 2012
Curiosity's main activity in the 62nd sol of the mission (Oct. 8, 2012) was to image a small, bright object on the ground using the Remote Micro-Imager of the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument. The rover team's assessment is that the bright object is something from the rover, not Martian material. It appears to be a shred of plastic material, likely benign, but it has not been defi ... read more


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