Checking out ChemCam's View . photonado

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Checking out ChemCam's View

This mosaic shows the calibration target for the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on NASA's Curiosity rover, as seen by the ChemCam's remote micro-imager. The 10 images incorporated in this mosaic were taken on Aug. 15. The ChemCam instrument will be firing a series of powerful, but invisible, laser pulses at a target rock or soil. It is located on the rover's mast. A telescopic camera known as the remote micro-imager will show the context of the spots hit with the laser. The calibration target has nine circles of different materials that scientists think the rover might encounter on Mars and one titanium-alloy square with a painted edge. The assembly is 5 inches (13 centimeters) long and incorporates targets fabricated in France and at Los Alamos National Laboratory in a metal body fabricated at Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass. In these images, scientists can see that the targets have different textures. Also visible in the titanium square are pits from laser firing tests before launch. ChemCam's imager was provided by the French space agency (CNES) and was flight- qualified by the Institute of Space Astrophysics in Orsay, France (IAS). JPL manages the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. For more about NASA's Curiosity mission, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl , http://www.nasa.gov/mars , and http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl .

Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP
Image released by NASA on 2012-08-17 as catalog id PIA16071