NASA Mars Curiosity Rover Examines selected rocks

This small ridge, about 3 feet long, appears to resist wind erosion more than the flatter plates around it. 

Such differences are among the traits NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is examining at selected rock targets at the base of Mount Sharp. Curiosity's Mastcam acquired this view on Oct. 7, 2014.

Image Credit: NASA /JPL-Caltech /MSSS

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has completed a reconnaissance "walkabout" of the first outcrop it reached at the base of the mission's destination mountain and has begun a second pass examining selected rocks in the outcrop in more detail.

Exposed layers on the lower portion of Mount Sharp are expected to hold evidence about dramatic changes in the environmental evolution of Mars. That was a major reason NASA chose this area of Mars for this mission.

The lowermost of these slices of time ascending the mountain includes a pale outcrop called "Pahrump Hills."

It bears layers of diverse textures that the mission has been studying since Curiosity acquired a drilled sample from the outcrop in September.

In its first pass up this outcrop, Curiosity drove about 360 feet (110 meters), and scouted sites ranging about 30 feet (9 meters) in elevation.

It evaluated potential study targets from a distance with mast-mounted cameras and a laser-firing spectrometer.

This patch of Martian bedrock, about 2 feet (70 centimeters) across, is finely layered rock with some pea-size inclusions. 

It lies near the lowest point of the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop, which forms part of the basal layer of Mount Sharp. Curiosity's Mastcam acquired this view on Nov. 9, 2014.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

"We see a diversity of textures in this outcrop -- some parts finely layered and fine-grained, others more blocky with erosion-resistant ledges," said Curiosity Deputy Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

"Overlaid on that structure are compositional variations. Some of those variations were detected with our spectrometer. Others show themselves as apparent differences in cementation or as mineral veins. There's a lot to study here."

During a second pass up the outrcrop, the mission is using a close-up camera and spectrometer on the rover's arm to examine selected targets in more detail.

The second-pass findings will feed into decisions about whether to drill into some target rocks during a third pass, to collect sample material for onboard laboratory analysis.

A wheel track cuts through a windblown ripple of dusty sand in this Nov. 7, 2014, image from the Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity rover. 

The view spans about four feet across. This experiment was planned for yielding a view of the inside of the ripple for assessment of particle sizes and composition.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

"The variations we've seen so far tell us that the environment was changing over time, both as the sediments were laid down and also after they hardened into bedrock," Vasavada said.

"We have selected targets that we think give us the best chance of answering questions about how the sediments were deposited, in standing water? flowing water? sand blowing in the wind? -- and about the composition during deposition and later changes."

The first target in the second pass is called "Pelona," a fine-grained, finely layered rock close to the September drilling target at the base of Pahrump Hills outcrop. The second is a more erosion-resistant ledge called "Pink Cliffs."

Before examining Pelona, researchers used Curiosity's wheels as a tool to expose a cross section of a nearby windblown ripple of dust and sand.

One motive for this experiment was to learn why some ripples that Curiosity drove into earlier this year were more difficult to cross than anticipated. 

NASA Mars Curiosity Rover discovers mineral match

This image shows the first holes drilled by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity at Mount Sharp. 

The loose material near the drill holes is drill tailings and an accumulation of dust that slid down the rock during drilling. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Reddish rock powder from the first hole drilled into a Martian mountain by NASA's Curiosity rover has yielded the mission's first confirmation of a mineral mapped from orbit.

"This connects us with the mineral identifications from orbit, which can now help guide our investigations as we climb the slope and test hypotheses derived from the orbital mapping," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Curiosity collected the powder by drilling into a rock outcrop at the base of Mount Sharp in late September.

The robotic arm delivered a pinch of the sample to the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument inside the rover.

This sample, from a target called "Confidence Hills" within the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop, contained much more hematite than any rock or soil sample previously analyzed by CheMin during the two-year-old mission.

Hematite is an iron-oxide mineral that gives clues about ancient environmental conditions from when it formed.

In observations reported in 2010, before selection of Curiosity's landing site, a mineral-mapping instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provided evidence of hematite in the geological unit that includes the Pahrump Hills outcrop.

The landing site is inside Gale Crater, an impact basin about 96 miles (154 kilometers) in diameter with the layered Mount Sharp rising about three miles (five kilometers) high in the center.

"We've reached the part of the crater where we have the mineralogical information that was important in selection of Gale Crater as the landing site," said Ralph Milliken of Brown University,

Providence, Rhode Island. He is a member of Curiosity's science team and was lead author of that 2010 report in Geophysical Research Letters identifying minerals based on observations of lower Mount Sharp by the orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM).

"We're now on a path where the orbital data can help us predict what minerals we'll find and make good choices about where to drill. Analyses like these will help us place rover-scale observations into the broader geologic history of Gale that we see from orbital data."

This image from NASA's Curiosity rover shows a sample of powdered rock extracted by the rover's drill from the "Confidence Hills" target, the first rock drilled after Curiosity reached the base of Mount Sharp in September 2014. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Much of Curiosity's first year on Mars was spent investigating outcrops in a low area of Gale Crater called "Yellowknife Bay," near the spot where the rover landed.

The rover found an ancient lakebed. Rocks there held evidence of wet environmental conditions billions of years ago that offered ingredients and an energy source favourable for microbial life, if Mars ever had microbes.

Clay minerals of interest in those rocks at Yellowknife Bay had not been detected from orbit, possibly due to dust coatings that interfere with CRISM's view of them.

The rover spent much of the mission's second year driving from Yellowknife Bay to the base of Mount Sharp.

The hematite found in the first sample from the mountain tells about environmental conditions different from the conditions recorded in the rocks of Yellowknife Bay.

The rock material interacted with water and atmosphere to become more oxidized.

The rocks analyzed earlier also contain iron-oxide minerals, mostly magnetite. One way to form hematite is to put magnetite in oxidizing conditions.

The latest sample has about eight percent hematite and four percent magnetite. The drilled rocks at Yellowknife Bay and on the way to Mount Sharp contain at most about one percent hematite and much higher amounts of magnetite.

"There's more oxidation involved in the new sample," said CheMin Deputy Principal Investigator David Vaniman of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona.

This side-by-side comparison shows the X-ray diffraction patterns of two different samples collected from rocks on Mars by NASA's Curiosity rover. 

The images present data obtained by Curiosity's Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin). 

At left is a pattern of data from analysis of the "Cumberland" rock target in the "Yellowknife Bay" area investigated by Curiosity in 2013. 

The pattern at right is from the "Confidence Hills" target that was the first rock drilled after Curiosity reached the base of Mount Sharp in September 2014. 

A label in the right image of the annotated view points out evidence for the mineral hematite in this rock. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The sample is only partially oxidized, and preservation of magnetite and olivine indicates a gradient of oxidation levels.

That gradient could have provided a chemical energy source for microbes.

The Pahrump HIlls outcrop includes multiple layers uphill from its lowest layer, where the Confidence Hills sample was drilled.

The layers vary in texture and may also vary in concentrations of hematite and other minerals.

The rover team is now using Curiosity to survey the outcrop and assess possible targets for close inspection and drilling.

This view shows the path and some key places in a survey of the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover in autumn of 2014. The outcrop is at the base of Mount Sharp within Gale Crater. 

The mission's in-place investigation of the layered mountain began at the low edge of the Pahrump Hills outcrop, at the target "Confidence Hills." 

Curiosity collected a drilled sample of rock powder at that target in September 2014 and delivered portions of the powder into analytical instruments inside the rover. 

Then the mission began a "walkabout" of the outcrop, similar to the way field geologists on Earth walk across an outcrop to choose the best places on it to examine in detail. 

The dashed gold line indicates the path the rover drove during the walkabout. Names are shown for a few of the features visited and observed by the rover. 

Red dots indicate stops at the end of a day's drive. White dots indicate locations of stops made during the drives to collect observations of the Pahrump Hills outcrop. 

The mission completed the walkabout at the site labeled "Whale Rock," and the team is now examining the observations acquired during the walkabout to decide where to return for more detailed analysis. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The mission may spend weeks to months at Pahrump Hills before proceeding farther up the stack of geological layers forming Mount Sharp.

Those higher layers include an erosion-resistant band of rock higher on Mount Sharp with such a strong orbital signature of hematite, it is called "Hematite Ridge."

The target drilled at Pahrump Hills is much softer and more deeply eroded than Hematite Ridge.

Another NASA Mars rover, Opportunity, made a key discovery of hematite-rich spherules on a different part of Mars in 2004.

That finding was important as evidence of a water-soaked history that produced those mineral concretions.

The form of hematite at Pahrump Hills is different and is most important as a clue about oxidation conditions. Plenty of other evidence in Gale Crater has testified to the ancient presence of water.

NASA MARS Curiosity Rover: Wind-Rippled Sandy 'Sea' on Mars

Photograph snapped by Curiosity's Navcam camera on sol 777 (Oct. 13) while at “Pahrump Hills”, the base of Mount Sharp.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

At first glance you’d be forgiven for thinking NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity had stumbled across a wind-rippled lake or sea at the base of Mount Sharp, but on closer inspection of new images captured by the robot’s Navcam, we realize that the apparent "waves" in this Martian vista are in fact ripples of sand and dust.

After a 778-sol (Mars day) drive since landing in August 2012, the six-wheeled rover finally reached the base of its ultimate destination, Mount Sharp, last month.

The 3.5 mile-high mountain in the center of Gale Crater holds great scientific promise; its rocky layers are an open history book of sorts, providing valuable information about the planet’s geological history and its potentially habitable ancient environment.

Currently, the rover is working in "Pahrump Hills," an outcrop at the mountain's base, after carrying out its fourth rock drilling operation on a target dubbed "Confidence Hills."

The drilled powder, which appears to be of a softer consistency compared with previous rock samples, has been ingested into Curiosity's onboard chemical lab to determine what the base of Mount Sharp is made of.

In this new observation (see the full resolution raw image here), Mars' windy environment is obvious.

There are many examples of aeolian (wind-blown) features across the Martian surface, including vast dune fields and wind erosion of small hills known as mesas.

Many of these features can only be seen from orbit, but Curiosity has a ground-level view of small-scale features such as these sandy waves resembling a choppy sea.

As Curiosity continues its drive up Mount Sharp over the coming months and, possibly, years, we can expect many more stunning examples of Mars' diverse geology and elegant wind-blown features, each observation helping us better understand the Red Planet’s evolution to its current form.

Mars Curiosity Rover Arrives at Martian Mountain - Video

Nasa Mars Rover Curiosity arrives at Murray Formation. Credit: NASA.

This image shows the old and new routes of NASA's Mars Curiosity rover and is composed of color strips taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. 

This new route provides excellent access to many features in the Murray Formation and it will eventually pass by the Murray Formation's namesake, Murray Buttes, previously considered to be the entry point to Mt. Sharp.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has reached the Red Planet's Mount Sharp, a Mount-Rainier-size mountain at the center of the vast Gale Crater and the rover mission's long-term prime destination.

"Curiosity now will begin a new chapter from an already outstanding introduction to the world," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

"After a historic and innovative landing along with its successful science discoveries, the scientific sequel is upon us."

Curiosity's trek up the mountain will begin with an examination of the mountain's lower slopes.

The rover is starting this process at an entry point near an outcrop called Pahrump Hills, rather than continuing on to the previously-planned, further entry point known as Murray Buttes.

Both entry points lay along a boundary where the southern base layer of the mountain meets crater-floor deposits washed down from the crater's northern rim.

"It has been a long but historic journey to this Martian mountain," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

"The nature of the terrain at Pahrump Hills and just beyond it is a better place than Murray Buttes to learn about the significance of this contact. The exposures at the contact are better due to greater topographic relief."

The decision to head uphill sooner, instead of continuing to Murray Buttes, also draws from improved understanding of the region's geography provided by the rover's examinations of several outcrops during the past year.

Curiosity currently is positioned at the base of the mountain along a pale, distinctive geological feature called the Murray formation.

Compared to neighbouring crater-floor terrain, the rock of the Murray formation is softer and does not preserve impact scars, as well. As viewed from orbit, it is not as well-layered as other units at the base of Mount Sharp.

This image from NASA's Mars Curiosity rover shows the "Amargosa Valley," on the slopes leading up to Mount Sharp on Mars. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Curiosity made its first close-up study last month of two Murray formation outcrops, both revealing notable differences from the terrain explored by Curiosity during the past year.

The first outcrop, called Bonanza King, proved too unstable for drilling, but was examined by the rover's instruments and determined to have high silicon content.

A second outcrop, examined with the rover's telephoto Mast Camera (MastCam), revealed a fine-grained, platy surface laced with sulfate-filled veins.

While some of these terrain differences are not apparent in observations made by NASA's Mars orbiters, the rover team still relies heavily on images taken by the agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to plan Curiosity's travel routes and locations for study.

For example, MRO images helped the rover team locate mesas that are over 60 feet (18 meters) tall in an area of terrain shortly beyond Pahrump Hills, which reveal an exposure of the Murray formation uphill and toward the south.

The team plans to use Curiosity's drill to acquire a sample from this site for analysis by instruments inside the rover.

The site lies at the southern end of a valley Curiosity will enter this week from the north.

This portion of a color mosaic taken by NASA's Mars Curiosity rover shows strata exposed along the margins of the valleys in the "Pahrump Hills" region on Mars.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Though this valley has a sandy floor the length of two football fields, the team expects it will be an easier trek than the sandy-floored Hidden Valley, where last month Curiosity's wheels slipped too much for safe crossing.

Curiosity reached its current location after its route was modified earlier this year in response to excessive wheel wear.

In late 2013, the team realized a region of Martian terrain littered with sharp, embedded rocks was poking holes in four of the rover's six wheels.

This damage accelerated the rate of wear and tear beyond that for which the rover team had planned. In response, the team altered the rover's route to a milder terrain, bringing the rover farther south, toward the base of Mount Sharp.

"The wheels issue contributed to taking the rover farther south sooner than planned, but it is not a factor in the science-driven decision to start ascending here rather than continuing to Murray Buttes first," said Jennifer Trosper, Curiosity Deputy Project Manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"We have been driving hard for many months to reach the entry point to Mount Sharp," Trosper said.

"Now that we've made it, we'll be adjusting the operations style from a priority on driving to a priority on conducting the investigations needed at each layer of the mountain."

After landing inside Gale Crater in August 2012, Curiosity fulfilled in its first year of operations its major science goal of determining whether Mars ever offered environmental conditions favourable for microbial life.

Clay-bearing sedimentary rocks on the crater floor, in an area called Yellowknife Bay, yielded evidence of a lakebed environment billions of years ago that offered fresh water, all of the key elemental ingredients for life, and a chemical source of energy for microbes.

NASA Curiosity Mars Rover Prepares for Fourth Rock Drilling

In this image from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover looking up the ramp at the northeastern end of "Hidden Valley," a pale outcrop including drilling target "Bonanza King" is at the center of the scene. 

The rover's Navcam captured this northward view on Aug. 4, 2014, from the valley's sandy floor.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The team operating NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has chosen a rock that looks like a pale paving stone as the mission's fourth drilling target, if it passes engineers' evaluation.

They call it "Bonanza King."

It is not at the "Pahrump Hills" site the team anticipated the rover might reach by mid-August.

Unexpected challenges while driving in sand prompted the mission to reverse course last week after entering a valley where ripples of sand fill the floor and extend onto sloping margins.

However, the new target outcrop's brightness and its position within the area's geological layers resemble the Pahrump Hills outcrop.

This Aug. 14, 2012, image from the Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows an outcrop that includes the "Bonanza King" rock under consideration as a drilling target. 

Raised ridges on the flat rocks are visible at right. 

Tread marks from a rover wheel are in the lower half.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

"Geologically speaking, we can tie the Bonanza King rocks to those at Pahrump Hills. Studying them here will give us a head start in understanding how they fit into the bigger picture of Gale Crater and Mount Sharp," said Curiosity Deputy Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Mount Sharp is the mission's long-term science destination, offering a stack of layers holding evidence about environmental changes on ancient Mars.

The mountain rises from inside Gale Crater, where Curiosity landed in August 2012.

All three rocks the rover has drilled so far have been geologically associated with the crater floor, rather than the mountain.

Sample material pulled from the first two and delivered to Curiosity's onboard analytical laboratories in 2013 provided evidence for ancient environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

A drilled sample from Bonanza King may add understanding about how environments varied and evolved.

This image from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover looks down the ramp at the northeastern end of "Hidden Valley" and across the sandy-floored valley to lower slopes of Mount Sharp on the horizon. 

The rover's Navigation Camera captured this southward view on Aug. 12, 2014, after exiting the valley. 

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA Mars Rover Curiosity nears mountain-base outcrop

This full-circle panorama of the landscape surrounding NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on July 31, 2014, offers a view into sandy lower terrain called "Hidden Valley," which is on the planned route ahead. 

It combines several images from Curiosity's Navigation Camera (NavCam). South is at the center. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech 

As it approaches the second anniversary of its landing on Mars, NASA's Curiosity rover is also approaching its first close look at bedrock that is part of Mount Sharp, the layered mountain in the middle of Mars' Gale Crater.

The mission made important discoveries during its first year by finding evidence of ancient lake and river environments.

During its second year, it has been driving toward long-term science destinations on lower slopes of Mount Sharp.

Those destinations are in an area beginning about 2 miles (3 kilometers) southwest of the rover's current location, but an appetizer outcrop of a base layer of the mountain lies much closer, less than one-third of a mile (500 meters) from Curiosity. The rover team is calling the outcrop "Pahrump Hills."

"We're coming to our first taste of a geological unit that's part of the base of the mountain rather than the floor of the crater," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "We will cross a major terrain boundary."

For about half of July, the rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, drove Curiosity across an area of hazardously sharp rocks called "Zabriskie Plateau."

Damage to Curiosity's aluminum wheels from driving across similar terrain last year prompted a change in route planning to skirt such rock-studded terrain wherever feasible.

The one-eighth mile (200 meters) across Zabriski Plateau was one of the longest stretches without a suitable detour on the redesigned route toward the long-term science destination.

The main map shows landforms near NASA's Curiosity Mars rover as the rover's second anniversary of landing on Mars nears. 

The gold traverse line ends at Curiosity's position as of July 31, 2014 (Sol 705).

The inset shows the entire traverse and the remaining distance to Murray Buttes. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech 

"The wheels took some damage getting across Zabriskie Plateau, but it's less than I expected from the amount of hard, sharp rocks embedded there," said JPL's Jim Erickson, project manager for Curiosity.

"The rover drivers showed that they're up to the task of getting around the really bad rocks. There will still be rough patches ahead."

"We didn't imagine prior to landing that we would see this kind of challenge to the vehicle, but we're handling it."

Another recent challenge appeared last week in the form of unexpected behavior by an onboard computer currently serving as backup.

Curiosity carries duplicate main computers. It has been operating on its B-side computer since a problem with the A-side computer prompted the team to command a side swap in February 2013.

Work in subsequent weeks of 2013 restored availability of the A-side as a backup in case of B-side trouble.

Last week, fresh commanding of the rover was suspended for two days while engineers confirmed that the A-side computer remains reliable as a backup.

Curiosity landed inside Gale Crater on Aug. 5, 2012, PDT (Aug. 6, 2012, EDT). During its first year of operations, it fulfilled its major science goal of determining whether Mars ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

Clay-bearing sedimentary rocks on the crater floor in an area called Yellowknife Bay yielded evidence of a lakebed environment billions of years ago that offered fresh water, all of the key elemental ingredients for life, and a chemical source of energy for microbes, if any existed there.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project continues to use Curiosity to assess ancient habitable environments and major changes in Martian environmental conditions.

The destinations on Mount Sharp offer a series of layers that recorded different chapters in the environmental evolution of early Mars.