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Home Science Chemistry

Curiosity rover takes another bite of Mars

Mihai Andrei by Mihai Andrei
October 23, 2012
in Chemistry, Space
Reading Time: 1 min read
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Nope, this is not the Mars chocolate I’m talking about – NASA’s Curiosity rover is digging in at Rocknest – a patch of Martian sand the robot has been exploring for the past week.

If you look at the picture above, taken by one of Curiosity’s camera, you can actually see three bite-like marks, left by the rover’s scoop robotic arm, which is used to extract samples from the Red Planet. But before it actually starts analyzing the sample, it must first purify it its sample-collection instruments using Martian sand as a cleansing abrasive – anything else could cause contamination. This type of contamination is an extremely serious issue, especially after the Curiosity spotted something (3D pic here) which can be debris from the land (although it’s also possible the speck is indeginous to Mars).

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After the sample is treated, Curiosity will use the CheMin (chemistry-mineralogy) tool to analyze what it picked up.

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Source: NASA

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Mihai Andrei

Mihai Andrei

Andrei's background is in geophysics, and he's been fascinated by it ever since he was a child. Feeling that there is a gap between scientists and the general audience, he started ZME Science -- and the results are what you see today.

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