Mini Drill by NASA’s Curiosity at Windjana Confirms Target Location Good for Drilling

Early this week NASA announced that the Curiosity rover was doing some preliminary examination of a rock in order to begin drilling. NASA has finally confirmed that the target location looks good for drilling.

In a latest announcement, NASA revealed the unmanned rover completed a shallow mini drill on April 29, 2014, on the rock target called Windjana in order to prepare for a full-depth drilling. This new target will be the mission's third sample-collection bid. 

The mini drill conducted on the target called Windjana, a sandstone slab, produced a hole that was nearly 2 centimetres deep.  Over the coming days, the team plans to go ahead with the third drilling of the Martian rock to retrieve samples for analysis.

Several tools were used by rover while examining the target rock. One of the tools was a wire-bristle brush that was used to remove the Martian dust from the patch on the sandstone.

The sandstone slab windjana was named after a gorge in Western Australia.

"In the brushed spot, we can see that the rock is fine-grained, its true color is much grayer than the surface dust, and some portions of the rock are harder than others, creating the interesting bumpy textures," Curiosity science team member, Melissa Rice of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, said in a news statement. "All of these traits reinforce our interest in drilling here in order understand the chemistry of the fluids that bound these grains together to form the rock."

During the drill, rover will collect powdered material from the interior of the rock and then portions of the sample will be delivered to the onboard laboratory.

Prior to this, the first two Martian rocks drilled and analyzed were mudstone slabs and were present in the Yellowknife Bay at a distance of 2.5 miles northeast of Curiosity's present destination at a waypoint dubbed 'The Kimberley'.

The researchers explain the purpose behind drilling the sandstone stating, "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."