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Mars Curiosity Rover Update: First Drill from Mount Sharp

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has collected its first drill sample from the base of Mount Sharp. The scientific allure of the layered mountain inside a crater is what drew the team to choose this part of Mars as its landing site. Late Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2014, the rover's hammering drill chewed about 2.6 inches deep into a basal-layer outcrop on Mount Sharp and collected a powdered-rock sample. Data and images received early Thursday at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed success of this operation. The powder collected by the drilling is temporarily held within the sample-handling mechanism on the rover's arm. "This drilling target is at the lowest part of the base layer of the mountain, and from here we plan to examine the higher, younger layers exposed in the nearby hills," said Curiosity Deputy Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of JPL. "This first look at rocks we believe to underlie Mount Sharp is exciting because it will begin to form a picture of the environment at the time the mountain formed, and what led to its growth. "

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    Transcript

    00:00:05 hi I'm Jennifer Trosper the deputy project manager on the Curiosity Rover and this is your Curiosity Rover report we landed on Mars over one Mars year ago with the purpose of studying Mount sharp we've driven six miles to get to the base of this incredible Mountain exploring the foothills of Mount sharp is like turning a history book page by page as we look at each

    00:00:28 layer we want to know what formed into deposited these layers and how are they related to each other we also want to understand the potential for organic preservation in each of these layers in preparation for drilling we did some testing here in the margard to understand how changing some of our drill parameters could help us be more effective at drilling softer and more

    00:00:47 breakable rocks like the ones we see at prump Hills we perform a mini drill on an adjacent rock usually to understand the properties of the material will be drilling then we do a full drill and if we confirm the sample won't clog our sample collection system the next step is to transfer it to the instruments for analysis since it's such an interesting location we expect to spend several

    00:01:08 weeks here systematically studying the Rocks layer by layer this has been your Curiosity Rover report check back for more updates