NASA Mars Rover Targets Unusual Rock Enroute To First Destination
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has driven up to a football-size rock that will be the first for the rover’s arm to examine.NASA.
Curiosity is about 8 feet (2.5 meters) from the rock. It lies about halfway from the rover’s landing site, Bradbury Landing, to a location called Glenelg. In coming days, the team plans to touch the rock with a spectrometer to determine its elemental composition and use an arm-mounted camera to take close-up photographs.
Both the arm-mounted Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer and the mast-mounted, laser-zapping Chemistry and Camera Instrument will be used for identifying elements in the rock. This will allow cross-checking of the two instruments.
Full Story: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-295&cid=release_2012-295
