lunes, 28 de abril de 2014

NASA : Curiosity Mars Rover Beside Sandstone Target 'Windjana'


Curiosity Mars Rover Beside Sandstone Target 'Windjana'
This image from the Navigation Camera (Navcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a sandstone slab on which the rover team has selected a target, "Windjana," for close-up examination and possible drilling. The target is on the approximately 2-foot-wide (60-centimeter-wide) rock seen in the right half of this view.
The Navcam's left-eye camera took this image during the 609th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (April 23, 2014). The rover's name is written on the covering for a portion of the robotic arm, here seen stowed at the front of the vehicle.
The sandstone target's informal name comes from Windjana Gorge in Western Australia. If this target meets criteria set by engineers and scientists, it could become the mission's third drilled rock and the first that is not mudstone.
The rock is within a waypoint location called "the Kimberley," where sandstone outcrops with differing resistance to wind erosion result in a stair-step pattern of layers. Windjana is within what the team calls the area's "middle unit," because it is intermediate between rocks that form buttes in the area and lower-lying rocks that show a pattern of striations.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover and the rover's Navcam.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
 
 
Drill Here? NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Inspects Site
 
Sandstone slab on Mars
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has driven within robotic-arm's reach of the sandstone slab at the center of this April 23 view from the rover's Mast Camera. The rover team plans to have Curiosity examine a target patch on the rock, called "Windjana," to aid a decision about whether to drill there.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Sandstone Target 'Windjana'
This image from the Navigation Camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a sandstone slab on which the rover team has selected a target, "Windjana," for close-up examination. The target is on the approximately 2-foot-wide rock seen in the right half of this April 23, 2014, view.
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Mars Sandstone Target 'Windjana'
In this Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter view of the Curiosity rover mission's waypoint called "the Kimberley," the red dot indicates the location of a sandstone target, "Windjana," selected for close-up inspection. The image was taken April 11, 2014, before the rover arrived at Windjana.
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

The team operating NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is telling the rover to use several tools this weekend to inspect a sandstone slab being evaluated as a possible drilling target.
If this target meets criteria set by engineers and scientists, it could become the mission's third drilled rock, and the first that is not mudstone. The team calls it "Windjana," after a gorge in Western Australia.
The planned inspection, designed to aid a decision on whether to drill at Windjana, includes observations with the camera and X-ray spectrometer at the end of the rover's arm, use of a brush to remove dust from a patch on the rock, and readings of composition at various points on the rock with an instrument that fires laser shots from the rover's mast.
Curiosity's hammering drill collects powdered sample material from the interior of a rock, and then the rover prepares and delivers portions of the sample to onboard laboratory instruments. The first two Martian rocks drilled and analyzed this way were mudstone slabs neighboring each other in Yellowknife Bay, about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) northeast of the rover's current location at a waypoint called "the Kimberley." Those two rocks yielded evidence of an ancient lakebed environment with key chemical elements and a chemical energy source that provided conditions billions of years ago favorable for microbial life.
From planned drilling at Windjana or some nearby location on sandstone at the Kimberley, Curiosity's science team hopes to analyze the cement that holds together the sand-size grains in the rock.
"We want to learn more about the wet process that turned sand deposits into sandstone here," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "What was the composition of the fluids that bound the grains together? That aqueous chemistry is part of the habitability story we're investigating."
Understanding why some sandstones in the area are harder than others also could help explain major shapes of the landscape where Curiosity is working inside Gale Crater. Erosion-resistant sandstone forms a capping layer of mesas and buttes. It could even hold hints about why Gale Crater has a large layered mountain, Mount Sharp, at its center.
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to assess ancient habitable environments and major changes in Martian environmental conditions. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech, built the rover and manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
The spectrometer on the rover's robotic arm is the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS), which was provided by the Canadian Space Agency. The camera on the arm is the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), built and operated by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. The laser on the mast is part of the Chemistry and Camera instrument (ChemCam), from the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the French national space agency, CNES. The rover's wire-bristle brush, the Dust Removal Tool, was built by Honeybee Robotics, New York.
For more information about Curiosity, visit
and
You can follow the mission on Facebook at
and on Twitter at
Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov
 
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com

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