NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has discovered the first mineral match from the Martian surface, the US space agency has announced.
Reddish rock powder from the first hole drilled into a Martian mountain by Curiosity has yielded the mission’s first confirmation of a mineral mapped from orbit.
‘This connects us with the mineral identifications from orbit, which can now help guide our
investigations as we climb the slope and test hypotheses derived from the orbital mapping,’ said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Curiosity collected the powder by drilling into a rock outcrop at the base of Mount Sharp in late September. The robotic arm delivered a pinch of the sample to the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument inside the rover.
This sample, from a target called ‘Confidence Hills’ within the ‘Pahrump Hills’ outcrop, contained much more haematite than any rock or soil sample previously analysed by CheMin during the two-year-old mission.Haematite is an iron-oxide mineral that gives clues about ancient environmental conditions from when it formed.
Reddish rock powder from the first hole drilled into a Martian mountain by Curiosity has yielded the mission’s first confirmation of a mineral mapped from orbit.
‘This connects us with the mineral identifications from orbit, which can now help guide our
investigations as we climb the slope and test hypotheses derived from the orbital mapping,’ said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Curiosity collected the powder by drilling into a rock outcrop at the base of Mount Sharp in late September. The robotic arm delivered a pinch of the sample to the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument inside the rover.
This sample, from a target called ‘Confidence Hills’ within the ‘Pahrump Hills’ outcrop, contained much more haematite than any rock or soil sample previously analysed by CheMin during the two-year-old mission.Haematite is an iron-oxide mineral that gives clues about ancient environmental conditions from when it formed.