Laser Hits on Martian Drill Tailings . photonado

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Laser Hits on Martian Drill Tailings

Annotated version Click on the image for larger version A day after NASA's Mars rover Curiosity drilled the first sample-collection hole into a rock on Mars, the rover's Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument shot laser pulses into the fresh rock powder that the drilling generated. This scene shows a line of pits left by laser hits on the drill tailings. The view is a mosaic of images taken by the remote micro-imager in ChemCam, with color information from Curiosity's MastCamera. The drilled hole, at lower center, is about 0.6 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter. Curiosity drilled the hole 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) deep during the 182nd Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (Feb. 8, 2013). ChemCam repeatedly zapped several points near the hole on Sol 183 (Feb. 9, 2013) to obtain spectra providing information about composition, and then on the same sol took the images that have been combined to create this view. Marks from the laser hits are visible along a line about halfway up the image. Arrows at 10 locations indicate the marks from the laser hits in the annotated version. The site is on a patch of flat rock called "John Klein" in the "Yellowknife Bay" area of Mars' Gale Crater. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the rover. More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .

Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/IRAP/CNES/LPGNantes/IAS/CNRS/MSSS
Image released by NASA on 2013-02-13 as catalog id: PIA16765