NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover nears turning point

Mars rover Curiosity will shift to a distance-driving mode and head for an area about 8 km away, at the base Mount Sharp after wrapping up investigations in the small area where it has been working for last six months.

In May, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission drilled a second rock target for sample material and delivered portions of that rock powder into laboratory instruments in one week, about one-fourth as much time as needed at the first drilled rock.

“We’re hitting full stride,” said Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager Jim Erickson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

“We needed a more deliberate pace for all the first-time activities by Curiosity since landing, but we won’t have many more of those,” Erickson said.

No additional rock drilling or soil scooping is planned in the “Glenelg” area that Curiosity entered last fall as the mission’s first destination after landing.

To reach Glenelg, the rover drove east about a third of a mile from the landing site. To reach the next destination, Mount Sharp, Curiosity will drive toward the southwest for many months.

“We don’t know when we’ll get to Mount Sharp. This truly is a mission of exploration, so just because our end goal is Mount Sharp doesn’t mean we’re not going to investigate interesting features along the way,” Erickson said.

Images of Mount Sharp taken from orbit and images Curiosity has taken from a distance reveal many layers where scientists anticipate finding evidence about how the ancient Martian environment changed and evolved.

While completing major first-time activities since landing, the mission has also already accomplished its main science objective.

Analysis of rock powder from the first drilled rock target, “John Klein,” provided evidence that an ancient environment in Gale Crater had favourable conditions for microbial life: the essential elemental ingredients, energy and ponded water that was neither too acidic nor too briny.

The rover team chose a similar rock, “Cumberland,” as the second drilling target to provide a check for the findings at John Klein.

Scientists are analysing laboratory-instrument results from portions of the Cumberland sample.

The science team has chosen three targets for brief observations before Curiosity leaves the Glenelg area: the boundary between bedrock areas of mudstone and sandstone, a layered outcrop called “Shaler” and a pitted outcrop called “Point Lake.”

“Shaler might be a river deposit. Point Lake might be volcanic or sedimentary. A closer look at them could give us better understanding of how the rocks we sampled with the drill fit into the history of how the environment changed,” said JPL’s Joy Crisp, deputy project scientist for Curiosity.

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