Curiosity Gives Mars a Good “Dusting”
January 8 2013
The NASA rover Curiosity, currently exploring the surface of Mars, has successfully used its brush tool for the first time. The tool’s rotating wire bristles are designed to sweep dust off the surface of rock. Brushing away dust gives Curiosity’s survey instrument–the arm-held hand lens camera and X-ray spectrometer–a clearer view of the texture and chemistry of the underlying rock–critical in selecting rock suitable for drilling.
The “dusting” is the final step toward the first deployment of Curiosity’s hammer-drill. The drill will produce a powdered sample that will be analyzed by the rover’s on-board laboratories. “We wanted to be sure we [have] an optimal target for the first use [of the dust removal tool],” stated Diana Trujillo of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Curiosity’s Dust Removal Tool has cleaned a patch of rock in preparation for the rover’s first attempt to drill into the Martian surface. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Curiosity, which landed on Mars in August 2012, is currently exploring an area known as Yellowknife Bay, a small depression in Gale Crater. The ultimate goal of the experiment is to determine whether microbial life might have flourished in Gale Crater in some past environments. Curiosity has already identified rock deposits laid down billions of years ago by running water, proof that other environments once existed in the crater.
Additional World Book articles:
- Mars Science Laboratory
- Microbiology
- Probing the Planets (a special report)
- The Search for Water on Mars (a special report)
- Space exploration 2003 (a Back in Time article)
