Nasa’s Curiosity rover has just drilled its first hole in the foothills of Mount Sharp, the 5-kilometre-high mountain on Mars that is the primary destination for the six-wheeled machine’s mission.
The rover’s hammering drill chewed about 2.6 inches deep into a basal-layer outcrop on Mount Sharp last week and collected a powdered-rock sample.
The powder collected by the drilling is temporarily held within the sample-handling mechanism on the rover’s arm.
“This drilling target is at the lowest part of the base layer of the mountain, and from here we plan to examine the higher, younger layers exposed in the nearby hills,” said Curiosity Deputy Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
“This first look at rocks we believe to underlie Mount Sharp is exciting because it will begin to form a picture of the environment at the time the mountain formed, and what led to its growth,” said Vasavada.
After landing on Mars in August 2012 but before beginning the drive towards Mount Sharp, Curiosity spent much of the mission’s first year productively studying an area much closer to the landing site, but in the opposite direction.
