NASA's
Mars rover Curiosity has completed first-time use of a brush it carries to
sweep dust off rocks.
Nearing
the end of a series of first-time uses of the rover's tools, the mission has
cleared dust away from a targeted patch on a flat Martian rock using the Dust
Removal Tool.
The
tool is a motorized, wire-bristle brush designed to prepare selected rock
surfaces for enhanced inspection by the rover's science instruments. It is
built into the turret at the end of the rover's arm. In particular, the Alpha
Particle X-ray Spectrometer and the Mars Hand Lens Imager, which share the
turret with the brush and the rover's hammering drill, can gain information
after dust removal that would not be accessible from a dust-blanketed rock.
Choosing
an appropriate target was crucial for the first-time use of the Dust Removal
Tool. The chosen target, called "Ekwir_1," is on a rock in the
"Yellowknife Bay" area of Mars' Gale Crater. The rover team is also
evaluating rocks in that area as potential targets for first use of the rover's
hammering drill in coming weeks.
"We
wanted to be sure we had an optimal target for the first use," said Diana
Trujillo of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., the mission's
activity lead for the Dust Removal Tool. "We need to place the instrument
within less than half an inch of the target without putting the hardware at
risk. We needed a flat target, one that wasn't rough, one that was covered with
dust. The results certainly look good."
Honeybee
Robotics, New York, N.Y., built the Dust Removal Tool for Curiosity, as well as
tools for two previous Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, which included wire
brushes plus rock-grinding mechanisms.
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory project is using Curiosity to
investigate whether the study area within Gale Crater has offered environmental
conditions favorable for microbial life. JPL, a division of the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory
mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
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