NASA's Mars rover Curiosity reaches intriguing salty site after treacherous journey - Space.com

After a treacherous journey, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has reached an country that is thought to person formed billions of years agone erstwhile the Red Planet's h2o disappeared.

This portion of Mount Sharp, the Curiosity rover's Martian stomping ground, is affluent successful salty minerals that scientists deliberation were near down erstwhile streams and ponds dried up. As such, this portion could clasp tantalizing clues astir however the Martian clime changed from being akin to Earth's to the frozen, barren godforsaken that Curiosity explores today.

The salty minerals that enrich this country of Mount Sharp were archetypal spotted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter years earlier Curiosity touched down connected the Martian aboveground successful 2012. 

Related: Curiosity rover: 15 awe-inspiring photos of Mars (gallery)

When Curiosity yet got a close-up look astatine the terrain of Mount Sharp, the rover discovered a divers array of stone types and signs of past water, including popcorn-textured nodules and salty minerals specified arsenic magnesium sulfate, calcium sulfate (including gypsum) and sodium chloride, which makes up mean array salt.

After accounting for stresses connected the rotary drill astatine the extremity of the rover's 7-foot (2 meters) limb that's utilized to pulverize stone samples for analysis, the Curiosity squad selected a stone nicknamed "Canaima" for the drilling and postulation of the mission's 36th drill sample.

"As we bash earlier each drill, we brushed distant the particulate and past poked the apical aboveground of Canaima with the drill," Kathya Zamora-Garcia, Curiosity's task manager, said successful a statement. "The deficiency of scratch marks oregon indentations was an denotation that it whitethorn beryllium hard to drill." 

The squad past stopped to spot whether that posed a information to Curiosity's arm. With a caller drilling algorithm created to minimize the usage of percussion, which is simply a hammering question utilized by drills to penetrate hard surfaces, they decided to proceed, and nary percussion was needed, Zamora-Garcia explained. 

The squad volition present analyse pieces of the illustration collected from Canaima utilizing Curiosity's Chemical and Mineralogy instrumentality and Sample Analysis astatine Mars instrument.

Curiosity's summertime roadworthy trip 

To scope the sulfate-rich region, the Curiosity rover spent August journeying done a narrow, sand-lined agelong called Paraitepuy Pass. It took implicit a period for Curiosity to safely navigate this treacherous terrain, which snakes betwixt precocious hills. Although Paraitepuy Pass is mostly escaped of crisp rocks that could harm the rover's wheels, soil tin beryllium conscionable arsenic hazardous for Curiosity; if its wheels suffer traction, the rover could get stuck. 

The rover's drivers besides had different situation to consider: The Martian entity was blocked by the hills astir it, meaning Curiosity had to beryllium cautiously positioned truthful that its antennas pointed toward Earth and could stay successful interaction with Mars orbiters. 

As the squad cautiously navigated this path, they were rewarded with immoderate stunning images from Curiosity's Mastcam, peculiarly a panorama of the portion captured connected Aug. 14.

"We would get caller images each greeting and conscionable beryllium successful awe," Curiosity's subject operations coordinator, Elena Amador-French, who manages collaboration betwixt the subject and engineering teams, said successful the statement. "The soil ridges were gorgeous. You spot cleanable small rover tracks connected them. And the cliffs were beautiful  —  we got truly adjacent to the walls."

Despite clearing Paraitepuy Pass, Curiosity has a pugnacious roadworthy ahead. This salty portion comes with its ain challenges — successful particular, the rover's operating squad volition person to relationship for the rocky terrain that makes it harder to spot each six of Curiosity's wheels connected unchangeable ground.

If Curiosity isn't stable, operators won't hazard unfolding its drill-holding limb successful lawsuit it clashes with jagged rocks. 

"The much and much absorbing the subject results get, the much obstacles Mars seems to propulsion astatine us," Amador-French said.

Curiosity volition proceed to research this area, proving that aft 10 years connected Mars, the rover inactive has a batch of crushed to cover.

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