NASA’s Curiosity rover is seen in the video above clutching and then vigorously shaking a tiny bit of Mars in its scoop.
Curiosity is currently in an area known as the Rocknest, where it has been picking up fine Martian sand and vibrating it at a tooth-rattling speed to remove any overfill and help engineers identify and discard large pebbles.
Soon, the rover will also be vibrating the material through its interior chemical testing systems to sand blast them and remove a residual oily film from Earth.
The equipment is so sensitive it could easily detect even a tiny smidgen of Earth dust, which would skew any results looking at Mars’ chemical makeup.
Engineers are planning to have Curiosity spit out its current sandy haul, then scoop and respit two more times to completely clean everything out.
After that, the rover will be ready to deliver a half-baby-aspirin-sized sample to its laboratory equipment, housed inside its body, for detailed chemical analysis.
Scientists think that this sample will be fairly boring, showing nothing they don’t expect, but will help them calibrate their instruments for future exploration.
Curiosity’s MastCams captured this film at about eight frames per second, though the full 256-frame video includes interpolated frames to bring it up to a 32-frame-per-second video.
Video: JPLnews/Youtube
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