Mars Rover Curiosity Snaps Beautiful Selfie After Rare Chemistry Experiment – Space.com

now exploring an area, dubbed” Glen Etive,”that’s abundant in clay minerals. Clays are great at protecting numerous chemical compounds, and they’re also proof of the previous presence of liquid water. Related: Amazing Mars Photos by NASA’s Curiosity Rover(Latest Images)”We’ve aspired to discover an area that would be engaging adequate to do dampchemistry,” Paul Mahaffy, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, stated in a statement. “Now that we’re in the clay-bearing unit, we’ve lastly got it.”Mahaffy is primary private investigator of Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, which evaluates the dirt and drilled rock powder that the six-wheeled rover collects as it explores the 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater.

SAM has 74 cups to accept these samples, the majority of which are kept dry and after that baked in a mini oven to see what gases boil off. A simple 9 cups are reserved for the special wet-chemistry work, so the objective group has actually been really parsimonious in their use to date.

Interest had formerly used a wet cup simply as soon as, in December 2016, shortly after the rover’s rock-boring drill malfunctioned. Mission staff member weren’t sure if they were going to have the ability to repair the drill and do damp chemistry in the future, so they conducted the experiment utilizing some loose sand that Curiosity had actually scooped up, NASA authorities said. (The group managed to fix Curiosity’s drill in 2018.)

The outcomes of last month’s experiment won’t be known up until next year, objective employee said.

“SAM’s information is incredibly complex and requires time to interpret,” Mahaffy stated. “But we’re all eager to see what we can gain from this brand-new place, Glen Etive.”

Annotated version of the selfie taken byNASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Oct. 11, 2019.(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS )Glen Etive, and the clay-bearing system, are on the lower slopes of Mount Sharp , the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 km)mountain that rises from Gale’s. Interest reached the mountain’s base in September 2014 and has actually been climbing the formation ever since. While doing so, the rover has actually been characterizing the possibly habitable ancient environment and looking for hints about Mars’ long-ago transition from a damp and warm world to the cold, dry desert planet we know today.

Part of Curiosity’s upward route is noticeable in a new selfie that NASA released last week. The picture consists of 57 stitched-together images that the robotic recorded on Oct. 11 utilizing the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), a camera mounted on completion of Curiosity’s 7-foot-long (2.1 meters) robotic arm.

For example, about 1,000 feet (300 m) behind Curiosity are the dark shapes of Vera Rubin Ridge, which the rover left about a year ago. And beyond the ridge is Gale Crater’s flooring, which, Curiosity found, when harbored a long-lived lake-and-stream system that might have supported Earth-like life in the ancient past.

Mike Wall’s book about the look for alien life, “ Out There”( Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

< img src="https://ift.tt/34ekGtD Curiosity rover took this selfie on Oct. 11, 2019, the 2,553 rd Martian day, or sol, of its objective. The

rover drilled twice in this area, which is nicknamed”Glen Etive.””class=”expandable lazy-image lazy-image-loading lazyload optional-image” onerror=”if(this.src & & this.src.indexOf (‘missing-image. svg’)! ==-1 ); this.parentNode.replaceChild(window.missingImage (), this)”sizes=” auto” data-normal =”https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/space/media/img/missing-image.svg”data-src=”https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/8qFxCaGd2Qv5iHCnjEFrhM-320-80.jpg”data-srcset=”https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/8qFxCaGd2Qv5iHCnjEFrhM-320-80.jpg 320w, https://ift.tt/2pseTSm 650w”data-sizes=”automobile”data-original-mos =”https://ift.tt/32VJ7fi; data-pin-media= “https://ift.tt/32VJ7fi;> NASA’s Curiosity rover took this selfie on Oct. 11, 2019, the 2,553 rd Martian day, or sol, of its mission. The rover drilled twice in this place, which

is nicknamed”Glen Etive.”(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover carried out some unusual science work just recently, then took a bit of a break to take in the austere appeal of its environments. On Sept. 24, Curiosity conducted a”damp chemistry”experiment for just the second time ever throughout itsseven years on the Red Planet, dropping a drilled sample into a special solvent that might help the rover identify carbon-containing organic particles. The objective group took this action because Curiosity is

NASA’s Curiosity rover took this selfie on Oct. 11, 2019, the 2,553 rd Martian day, or sol, of its mission. Interest had previously utilized a wet cup simply as soon as, in December 2016, soon after the rover’s rock-boring drill malfunctioned. Objective team members weren’t sure if they were going to be able to fix the drill and do wet chemistry in the future, so they carried out the experiment using some loose sand that Curiosity had scooped up, NASA officials stated. About 1,000 feet (300 m) behind Curiosity are the dark shapes of Vera Rubin Ridge, which the rover left about a year earlier.

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