14 DAY TRIAL // Even a "routine" sand scooping mission can be packed with surprises on Mars. Curiosity is now finally analyzing its first soil sample after several shiny objects interfere with the plan. First, a relatively large object, 1.3 cm, 0.5 inch, was spotted.
That turned out to be a piece of plastic that fell off Curiosity. The NASA team concluded that there was no damage done and proceeded with the sand scooping.
The plan was to take two scoops to clean the equipment and only analyze samples from the third scoop.
However, the second scoop was discarded without using it in any way because of more shiny particles among the sand in the scoop.
On closer inspection, the same particles were seen in the "bite" mark left on the ground by the scoop, indicating that the shiny particles, which are at most 2 mm in diameter, were native to Mars.
The team will take a closer look, Curiosity will use its ChemCam instrument to both peek at the shiny particle and the darker particles around it, from both the discarded sand and the hole dug by Curiosity.
In the meantime, Curiosity has reached a major milestone, the first soil sample was sent to the CheMin instrument, which is designed to analyze minerals.
This should give the team an idea of the type of minerals found in the sand near Curiosity.
"The sample is a sieved portion -- about as much material as in a baby aspirin -- from the third scoop collected by Curiosity as a windblown patch of dusty sand called 'Rocknest.' The rover's robotic arm delivered the sample to CheMin's opened inlet funnel on the rover's deck on Oct. 17," NASA explained.
The results should be coming soon, but the team doesn't expect to find anything spectacular, this is more about testing the instruments than about scientific discoveries. Still, any data regarding the planet and its composition is going to be valuable.
