Curiosity Team Pinpoints Site for 1st Drive

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NASA Curiosity Team Pinpoints Site for First Drive

This image shows the landing site of NASA's Curiosity rover and destinations scientists want to investigate. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

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PASADENA, Calif. -- The scientists and engineers of NASA's Curiosity rover mission have selected the first driving destination for their one-ton, six-wheeled mobile Mars laboratory. The target area, named Glenelg, is a natural intersection of three kinds of terrain. The choice was described by Curiosity Principal Investigator John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology during a media teleconference on Aug. 17.

"With such a great landing spot in Gale Crater, we literally had every degree of the compass to choose from for our first drive," Grotzinger said. "We had a bunch of strong contenders. It is the kind of dilemma planetary scientists dream of, but you can only go one place for the first drilling for a rock sample on Mars. That first drilling will be a huge moment in the history of Mars exploration."

The trek to Glenelg will send the rover 1,300 feet (400 meters) east-southeast of its landing site. One of the three types of terrain intersecting at Glenelg is layered bedrock, which is attractive as the first drilling target.

"We're about ready to load our new destination into our GPS and head out onto the open road," Grotzinger said. "Our challenge is there is no GPS on Mars, so we have a roomful of rover-driver engineers providing our turn-by-turn navigation for us."

Prior to the rover's trip to Glenelg, the team in charge of Curiosity's Chemistry and Camera instrument, or ChemCam, is planning to give their mast-mounted, rock-zapping laser and telescope combination a thorough checkout. On Saturday night, Aug. 18, ChemCam is expected to "zap" its first rock in the name of planetary science. It will be the first time such a powerful laser has been used on the surface of another world.

"Rock N165 looks like your typical Mars rock, about three inches wide. It's about 10 feet away," said Roger Wiens, principal investigator of the ChemCam instrument from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "We are going to hit it with 14 millijoules of energy 30 times in 10 seconds. It is not only going to be an excellent test of our system, it should be pretty cool too."

Mission engineers are devoting more time to planning the first roll of Curiosity. In the coming days, the rover will exercise each of its four steerable (front and back) wheels, turning each of them side-to-side before ending up with each wheel pointing straight ahead. On a later day, the rover will drive forward about one rover-length (10 feet, or 3 meters), turn 90 degrees, and then kick into reverse for about 7 feet (2 meters).

"There will be a lot of important firsts that will be taking place for Curiosity over the next few weeks, but the first motion of its wheels, the first time our roving laboratory on Mars does some actual roving, that will be something special," said Michael Watkins, mission manager for Curiosity from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft delivered Curiosity to its target area on Mars at 10:31:45 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5 (1:31:45 a.m. EDT on Aug. 6), which included the 13.8 minutes needed for confirmation of the touchdown to be radioed to Earth at the speed of light.

The audio and visuals of the teleconference are archived and available for viewing at:

http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl

The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL, a division of Caltech. ChemCam was provided by Los Alamos National Laboratory. France provided ChemCam's laser and telescope.

For more information about NASA's Curiosity mission, visit: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.

Guy Webster/D.C. Agle 818-354-6278 / 818-393-9011

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov / agle@jpl.nasa.gov

Steve Cole 202-358-0918

NASA Headquarters, Washington

stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

2012-246

Source

[Still Waters]

Nasa's Curiosity rover is getting ready to zap its first Martian rock.

A small stone lying just to the side of the vehicle at its landing site on the floor of Gale Crater has been selected as a test target for the ChemCam laser.

The brief but powerful burst of light from this instrument will vaporise the surface of the rock, revealing details of its basic chemistry.

Dubbed N165, the object is not expected to have any science value, but should show ChemCam is ready for serious work.

"I'd probably guess this is a typical Mars basalt - basaltic rocks making up a large fraction of all the igneous rocks on Mars," Roger Wiens, the instrument's principal investigator, told BBC News.

http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-19302886