NASA Mars Rover Fully Analyzes First Soil Samples

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News release: 2012-380 Dec. 3, 2012

NASA Mars Rover Fully Analyzes First Soil Samples

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-380&cid=release_2012-380

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has used its full array of instruments to
analyze Martian soil for the first time, and found a complex chemistry within the Martian soil.
Water and sulfur and chlorine-containing substances, among other ingredients, showed up in
samples Curiosity's arm delivered to an analytical laboratory inside the rover.

Detection of the substances during this early phase of the mission demonstrates the laboratory's
capability to analyze diverse soil and rock samples over the next two years. Scientists also have
been verifying the capabilities of the rover's instruments.

Curiosity is the first Mars rover able to scoop soil into analytical instruments. The specific soil
sample came from a drift of windblown dust and sand called "Rocknest." The site lies in a
relatively flat part of Gale Crater still miles away from the rover's main destination on the slope
of a mountain called Mount Sharp. The rover's laboratory includes the Sample Analysis at Mars
(SAM) suite and the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument. SAM used three methods
to analyze gases given off from the dusty sand when it was heated in a tiny oven. One class of
substances SAM checks for is organic compounds -- carbon-containing chemicals that can be
ingredients for life.

"We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in
the diverse environments of Gale Crater," said SAM Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Curiosity's APXS instrument and the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the rover's
arm confirmed Rocknest has chemical-element composition and textural appearance similar to
sites visited by earlier NASA Mars rovers Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity.

Curiosity's team selected Rocknest as the first scooping site because it has fine sand particles
suited for scrubbing interior surfaces of the arm's sample-handling chambers. Sand was vibrated
inside the chambers to remove residue from Earth. MAHLI close-up images of Rocknest show a
dust-coated crust one or two sand grains thick, covering dark, finer sand.

"Active drifts on Mars look darker on the surface," said MAHLI Principal Investigator Ken
Edgett, of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego. "This is an older drift that has had time to
be inactive, letting the crust form and dust accumulate on it."

CheMin's examination of Rocknest samples found the composition is about half common
volcanic minerals and half non-crystalline materials such as glass. SAM added information about
ingredients present in much lower concentrations and about ratios of isotopes. Isotopes are
different forms of the same element and can provide clues about environmental changes. The
water seen by SAM does not mean the drift was wet. Water molecules bound to grains of sand or
dust are not unusual, but the quantity seen was higher than anticipated.

SAM tentatively identified the oxygen and chlorine compound perchlorate. This is a reactive
chemical previously found in arctic Martian soil by NASA's Phoenix Lander. Reactions with
other chemicals heated in SAM formed chlorinated methane compounds -- one-carbon organics
that were detected by the instrument. The chlorine is of Martian origin, but it is possible the
carbon may be of Earth origin, carried by Curiosity and detected by SAM's high sensitivity
design.

"We used almost every part of our science payload examining this drift," said Curiosity Project
Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "The synergies
of the instruments and richness of the data sets give us great promise for using them at the
mission's main science destination on Mount Sharp."

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to assess whether areas inside Gale
Crater ever offered a habitable environment for microbes. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, a division of Caltech, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington, and built Curiosity.

For more information about Curiosity and other Mars missions, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/mars .

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:
http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

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