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| The NASA Mars rover Curiosity used its left Navigation Camera to record this view of the step down into a shallow depression called "Yellowknife Bay." Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech |
This map traces where NASA's Mars rover
Curiosity drove between landing at a site subsequently named "Bradbury
Landing," and the position reached during the mission's 130th Martian day,
or sol, (Dec. 17, 2012). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
Mission
status report
The
NASA Mars rover Curiosity this week is driving within a shallow depression
called "Yellowknife Bay," providing information to help researchers
choose a rock to drill.
Using
Curiosity's percussive drill to collect a sample from the interior of a rock, a
feat never before attempted on Mars, is the mission's priority for early 2013.
After the powdered-rock sample is sieved and portioned by a sample-processing
mechanism on the rover's arm, it will be analyzed by instruments inside
Curiosity.
Yellowknife
Bay is within a different type of terrain from what the rover has traversed
since landing inside Mars' Gale Crater on Aug. 5, PDT (Aug. 6, UTC). The
terrain Curiosity has entered is one of three types that intersect at a
location dubbed "Glenelg," chosen as an interim destination about two
weeks after the landing.
Curiosity
reached the lip of a 2-foot (half-meter) descent into Yellowknife Bay with a
46-foot (14-meter) drive on Dec. 11. The next day, a drive of about 86 feet
(26.1 meters) brought the rover well inside the basin. The team has been
employing the Mast Camera (Mastcam) and the laser-wielding Chemistry and Camera
(ChemCam) for remote-sensing studies of rocks along the way.
On
Dec. 14, Curiosity drove about 108 feet (32.8 meters) to reach rock targets of
interest called "Costello" and "Flaherty." Researchers used
the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI)
at the end of the rover's arm to examine the targets. After finishing those
studies, the rover drove again on Dec. 17, traveling about 18 feet (5.6 meters)
farther into Yellowknife Bay. That brings the mission's total driving distance
to 0.42 mile (677 meters) since Curiosity's landing.
One
additional drive is planned this week before the rover team gets a holiday
break. Curiosity will continue studying the Martian environment from its
holiday location at the end point of that drive within Yellowknife Bay. The
mission's plans for most of 2013 center on driving toward the primary science
destination, a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer) layered mound called Mount Sharp.
NASA's
Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity during a two-year prime
mission to assess whether areas inside Gale Crater ever offered a habitable
environment for microbes. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's
Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
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