Mars Rover Curiosity Self-Portrait at 'Windjana' Drilling Site

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used the camera at the end of its arm in April and May 2014 to take dozens of component images combined into this self-portrait where the rover drilled into a sandstone target called "Windjana."

The camera is the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), which previously recorded portraits of Curiosity at two other important sites during the mission: "Rock Nest" and "John Klein"

Winjana is within a science waypoint site called "The Kimberley," where sandstone layers with different degrees of resistance to wind erosion are exposed close together.

The view does not include the rover's arm. It does include the hole in Windjana produced by the hammering drill on Curiosity's arm collecting a sample of rock powder from the interior of the rock.

 The hole is surrounded by grayish cuttings on top of the rock ledge to the left of the rover. The Mast Camera (Mastcam) atop the rover's remote sensing mast is pointed at the drill hole.

The Mastcam image of the drill hole from that perspective. The hole is 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter. The rover's wheels are 20 inches (0.5 meter) in diameter.

Most of the component frames of this mosaic view were taken during the 613th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (April 27, 2014).

 Frames showing Windjana after completion of the drilling were taken on Sol 627 (May 12, 2014). The hole was drilled on Sol 621 (May 5, 2014).

MAHLI was built by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover.

• NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover Marks First Martian Year with Mission Successes

NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Wrapping Up drilling tasks at 'Windjana,' the Waypoint

The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover provided this nighttime view of a hole produced by the rover's drill and, inside the hole, a line of scars produced by the rover's rock-zapping laser. 

The camera used its own white-light LEDs to illuminate the scene on May 13, 2014.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Portions of powdered rock collected by drilling into a sandstone target last week have been delivered to laboratory instruments inside NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, and the rover will soon drive on toward its long-term destination on a mountain slope.

Other instruments on the rover have inspected the rock's interior exposed in the hole and in drill cuttings heaped around the hole.

The target rock, "Windjana," is a sandstone slab within a science waypoint area called "The Kimberley."

The camera and spectrometer at the end of Curiosity's robotic arm examined the texture and composition of the cuttings.

The instrument that fires a laser from atop the rover's mast zapped a series of points inside the hole with sharpshooter accuracy.

The rover team has decided not to drill any other rock target at this waypoint. In coming days, Curiosity will resume driving toward Mount Sharp, the layered mountain at the middle of Mars' Gale Crater.

The rover is carrying with it some of the powdered sample material from Windjana that can be delivered for additional internal laboratory analysis during pauses in the drive.

The mission's two previous rock-drilling sites, at mudstone targets, yielded evidence last year of an ancient lakebed environment with key chemical elements and a chemical energy source that long ago provided conditions favorable for microbial life.

NASA's Curiosity rover drills sandstone slab Windjana on Mars

This May 5, 2014, image from the Navigation Camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows two holes at top centre drilled into a sandstone target called "Windjana." 

The farther hole was created by the rover's drill while it collected rock-powder sample material from the interior of the rock. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Portions of rock powder collected by the hammering drill on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from a slab of Martian sandstone "Windjana," will be delivered to the rover's internal instruments.

Rover team members at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., received confirmation early today (Tuesday) of Curiosity's third successful acquisition of a drilled rock sample, following the drilling Monday evening (PDT).

The fresh hole in the rock target "Windjana," visible in images from the rover, is 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter and about 2.6 inches (6.5 centimeters) deep.

The full-depth hole for sample collection is close to a shallower test hole drilled last week in the same rock, which gave researchers a preview of the interior material as tailings around the hole.

Jim Bell

"The drill tailings from this rock are darker-toned and less red than we saw at the two previous drill sites," said Jim Bell of Arizona State University, Tempe, deputy principal investigator for Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam).

"This suggests that the detailed chemical and mineral analysis that will be coming from Curiosity's other instruments could reveal different materials than we've seen before. We can't wait to find out!"

The mission's two previous rock-drilling sites, at mudstone targets in the Yellowknife Bay area, yielded evidence last year of an ancient lakebed environment with key chemical elements and a chemical energy source that long ago provided conditions favourable for microbial life.

The rover's current location is at a waypoint called "The Kimberley," about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) southwest of Yellowknife Bay, and along the route toward the mission's long-term destination on lower slopes of Mount Sharp.

Sample material from Windjana will be sieved, then delivered in coming days to onboard laboratories for determining the mineral and chemical composition: the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin) and the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument (SAM).

The analysis of the sample may continue as the rover drives on from The Kimberley toward Mount Sharp. One motive for the team's selection of Windjana for drilling is to analyze the cementing material that holds together sand-size grains in this sandstone.

NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Inspects new Drill Site - Windjana

The team operating NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is telling the rover to use several tools this weekend to inspect a sandstone slab being evaluated as a possible drilling target.

If this target meets criteria set by engineers and scientists, it could become the mission's third drilled rock, and the first that is not mudstone.

The team calls it "Windjana," after a gorge in Western Australia.

The planned inspection, designed to aid a decision on whether to drill at Windjana, includes observations with the camera and X-ray spectrometer at the end of the rover's arm, use of a brush to remove dust from a patch on the rock, and readings of composition at various points on the rock with an instrument that fires laser shots from the rover's mast.

Curiosity's hammering drill collects powdered sample material from the interior of a rock, and then the rover prepares and delivers portions of the sample to onboard laboratory instruments.

The first two Martian rocks drilled and analyzed this way were mudstone slabs neighboring each other in Yellowknife Bay, about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) northeast of the rover's current location at a waypoint called "the Kimberley."

Those two rocks yielded evidence of an ancient lakebed environment with key chemical elements and a chemical energy source that provided conditions billions of years ago favourable for microbial life.

From planned drilling at Windjana or some nearby location on sandstone at the Kimberley, Curiosity's science team hopes to analyze the cement that holds together the sand-size grains in the rock.

"We want to learn more about the wet process that turned sand deposits into sandstone here," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

"What was the composition of the fluids that bound the grains together?

That aqueous chemistry is part of the habitability story we're investigating."

The view is an excerpt from an April 11, 2014, observation by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. 

A larger scene from the same observation can be found here.

In the image's enhanced colour, Curiosity itself appears as the bright blue object at the two-o'clock position relative to the butte in the lower center of the scene.

That butte is called "Mount Remarkable" and stands about 16 feet (5 meters) high.

The rover subsequently drove to within its robotic arm's reach of Windjana. For scale, the distance between the parallel wheel tracks visible in the image is about 9 feet (2.7 meters).