NASA's Curiosity Rover Fires 100,000th ChemCam Laser Shot on Mars

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity fires its mast-mounted ChemCam laser at a rock target in this artist's illustration. 

The laser has fired more than 100,000 shots on Mars.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's trigger-happy Curiosity rover has fired its 100,000th laser shot on Mars, a science milestone in its mission to determine what rocks on the Red Planet are made of, NASA announced Thursday (Dec. 5).

Each laser pulse shot by the Curiosity rover packs the power nearly 1 million light bulbs — strong enough to vaporize rock and dust from up to 30 feet (9 meters) away.

"#PewPewPew I've fired my ChemCam laser 100,000+ times on Mars for SCIENCE!" Curiosity's team wrote in the voice of the rover in a Twitter post Thursday.

Originating from the French-made ChemCam instrument on Curiosity's "head," these beams are used to study the chemical composition of Mars.

ChemCam has a spectrometer that analyzes the light emitted by the zapped targets on Mars.

The instrument is sensitive enough to detect light from every element on the periodic table.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is equipped with a Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument to fire lasers at targets. 

In late October 2013, a Martian rock called "Ithaca," that received the rover's 100,000th zapping.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech /LANL /CNES /IRAP

The 100,000th laser firing came as Curiosity was shooting a target called "Ithaca" in late October, according to NASA.

Roger Wiens, a planetary scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and principal investigator for ChemCam, said the laser-firing instrument has exceeded expectations.

"The information we've gleaned from the instrument will continue to enhance our understanding of the Red Planet, and will nicely complement information from the other nine instruments aboard Curiosity as we continue our odyssey to Mount Sharp," Wiens said in a statement from Los Alamos.

Rising 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the center of Mars' huge Gale Crater — where Curiosity landed in August 2012 — Mount Sharp is the rover's main destination.

Scientists hope Curiosity, which is about the size of a small SUV, will uncover clues about the ancient environment and habitability of Mars while scouring the foothills of the mountain.

The Curiosity rover has already made some amazing discoveries on Mars using ChemCam and its other instruments.

Besides findings that Mars had a rather wet past, Curiosity recently helped scientists determine that each cubic foot of surface soil on Mars is made up of 2 percent water, which may be enough to quench the thirst of future astronauts.

"ChemCam was designed to fire one million shots, so we’ll have lots of stories to tell later on," Wiens added.

New Google Wave to be Beta Tested by 100,000 Users

Google Wave, a product that promises to revolutionize online communication, will go out to about 100,000 beta testers Wednesday.

Google Wave hopes to replace e-mail as the main way people communicate online.
The Web application from Google Inc. combines elements of e-mail, chat, Wiki documents, blogs and photo-sharing sites to create a form of Internet communication called a "hosted conversation," or a "wave."

Watch the Video Presentation

Google demonstrated Wave at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, California, in May. The closed group of beta testers will help Google fish bugs out of the application before a public release by the end of the year, according to the Google Wave Web site.

The app was created by Jens and Lars Rasmussen, the Australian brothers who developed Google Maps. The Rasmussen brothers said they hope Google Wave will eventually replace e-mail as the main way people converse on the Internet.

"This should be something everybody uses and something everybody knows," Jens Rasmussen said.

In Wave, e-mail-like communications can be edited by several users simultaneously. And users can chat about certain sections of Wave documents in real time, where all users see what a person is typing as it is typed. If a person comes to the conversation late, they can replay everything they've missed.

The Rasmussens hope these functions will make online communication more efficient and collaborative.

Here are some of the Google Wave features and add-ons that could drive real benefits for organisations:

Ribbit (currently in beta) brings in audio with its conference call gadget and message gadget, incorporating real-time audio streaming and recorded messages (including a transcript) in the associated wave. No means of communication left behind!

Salesforce.com is working on a prototype extension to Google Wave that could help its customers provide customized, documented support in their own businesses — leveraging the cloud-based platforms and interactive capabilities. Support cases are maintained and updated, from initial point of contact to resolution within the wave. Google Wave, with the ability to interact with other cloud platforms, could change the way customer support is handled.

SAP is working on a prototype for business process modeling called Gravity. Using the communication integration capabilities of Wave, users collaborate on business process modeling activities in near real time — working together to approve models, find windows of opportunity for business process automation and help build a strategy for execution and refinement of the processes.

It’s still early days for the Wave technology (some bugs and kinks need to be worked out) but it all looks promising and a tool for CIOs to embrace