YAHOO.COM - NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has pounded into a Red Planet rock with its
drill for the first time, bringing the 1-ton robot a big step closer to
initiating its first full-bore drilling operations.
The Curiosity rover hammered
the rock using the arm-mounted drill's percussive action over the
weekend, completing another test along the path toward spinning the bit
and biting into rock for the first time.
"We tapped this rock on Mars with our drill. Keep it classy everyone,"
Curiosity flight director Bobak Ferdowsi — who gained fame as "Mohawk
Guy" during the rover's nail-biting landing on the night of Aug. 5, 2012
— wrote in a Twitter post Sunday (Feb. 3), sharing a photo of the
pounded rock.
Curiosity's drill can bore 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) into Martian rock,
deeper than any rover has been able to go before. Using the drill and
its associated systems is a complex operation, so the mission team has
been building up slowly to the first drilling activity on the Red Planet.
Last week, Curiosity performed some "pre-load" tests, pressing down on a
rock with its drill in several different places to see if the amount of
force applied matches predictions.
The six-wheeled robot has also been carefully evaluating its target
rock, which is part of an outcrop the mission team has named "John
Klein," after a former Curiosity deputy project manager who died in
2011.
Curiosity's main goal is to determine if its Gale Crater landing site could
ever have supported microbial life. Along with the rover's 10 science
instruments and 17 cameras, the drill is viewed as key in this quest, as
it allows Curiosity to dig deep into Martian rocks for potential signs
of past habitability.
The mission team wants to test the drill out on a target with
scientific value, and John Klein seems to qualify. The outcrop shows
many signs of past exposure to liquid water, including light-colored
mineral veins that were apparently deposited by flowing water long ago.
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