Curiosity Rover Scoops First Soil Sample on Mars [video and article]
_Featured_, Science, Space, Technology, Videos Tuesday, October 9th, 2012
(By Carl Franzen | TPMIdeaLab)
NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover has reached down and picked up its first bit of the Red Planet, NASA announced Monday.
As planned, Curiosity scooped its first sample of Martian sand on Sunday using its Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA), a multi-purpose instrument on the end of the rover’s 7-foot-long robotic arm.
The scoop — which will be the first of at least four at the rover’s current location — left behind a visible hole in the Martian sand at the rover’s current site, an area dubbed “Rocknest” for the prevalence of boulders observed by the rover.
NASA published the above full color video of the sample just after the scooping operation, as taken by the rover’s mast camera (Mastcam). The video is made up of 256-individual frames captured at 8-frames-per second but sped-up in this view to 32-frames-per-second.
As planned, Curiosity scooped its first sample of Martian sand on Sunday using its Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA), a multi-purpose instrument on the end of the rover’s 7-foot-long robotic arm.
The scoop — which will be the first of at least four at the rover’s current location — left behind a visible hole in the Martian sand at the rover’s current site, an area dubbed “Rocknest” for the prevalence of boulders observed by the rover.
NASA published the above full color video of the sample just after the scooping operation, as taken by the rover’s mast camera (Mastcam). The video is made up of 256-individual frames captured at 8-frames-per second but sped-up in this view to 32-frames-per-second.
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