NASA Mars Curiosity Rover Targets Crystal-Rich 'Mojave' Rock for Drilling

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover now has its next target. Called "Mojave," the new target could tell researchers quite a bit more about the history and geologic past of the Red Planet.

The new target displays copious slender features, slightly smaller than grains of rice, that appear to be mineral crystals. Now, scientists have chosen Mojave as the next rock-drilling target during the investigation of Mars' Gale Crater. It's very possible that the features seen in this rock might be a salt mineral left behind when lakewater evaporated.

This week, Curiosity is scheduled to begin a "mini-drill" test to assess the rock's suitability for deeper drilling, which collects a sample for onboard laboratory analysis. That's not all that Curiosity has scheduled, though; there's also going to be a weeklong pause in science operations to install a new version of rover flight software early next week, possibly before completion of the drilling sample delivery.

"The crystal shapes are apparent in the earlier images of Mojave, but we don't know what they represent," said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity project scientist, in a news release. "We're hoping that mineral identifications we get from the rover's laboratory will shed more light than we go from just the images and bulk chemistry."

Curiosity's Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument, called CheMin, can identify specific minerals in rock powder from a drilled sample. Scientists hope that analysis of the drill hole and drill tailings may reveal whether the crystals are only at the surface, or deeper inside Mojave.

"There could be a fairly involved story here," said Vasavada. "Are they salt crystals left from a drying lake? Or are they more pervasive through the rock, formed by fluids moving through the rock? In either case, a later fluid may have removed or replaced the original minerals with something else."

The findings could be huge when understanding Mars' ancient past. More specifically, it may shed light on what form water on Mars took in the past.

For more information about the Curiosity rover, you can visit NASA's website.

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