CHIMRA tagged posts

Curiosity rover reached out with robotic arm and drilled into ‘Lubango’ outcrop target on Sol 1320, Apr. 23, 2016, in this photo mosaic stitched from navcam camera raw images and colorized. Lubango is located in the Stimson unit on the lower slopes of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater. MAHLI camera inset image shows drill hole up close on Sol 1321. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo

NASA’s Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover successfully bored a brand new hole in Mars at a sandstone outcrop in the ‘Lubango’ fracture zone this past weekend on Sol 1320, Apr23, and is now carefully analyzing the shaken and sieved drill tailings for clues to Mars watery past atop the Naukluft Plateau.

“Lubango” counts as the 10th drilling campaign since the one ton rover...

This Jan. 19, 2016, self-portrait of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at “Namib Dune,” where the rover’s activities included scuffing into the dune with a wheel and scooping samples of sand for laboratory analysis. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The new selfie combines 57 images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of Curiosity’s arm on Jan. 19. The rover has been investigating a group of active sand dunes for 2 months, studying how the wind moves and sorts sand particles on Mars. The site is part of Bagnold Dune Field, which lines the northwestern flank of Mars’ Mount Sharp.

When the component images were taken, the rover had scuffed the edge of “Namib Dune” and collected the first of 3 scoops of sand from that dune...