key
The combined system, called the Chemistry-and-Camera instrument, or ChemCam,
is designed to take about 14,000 measurements throughout Curiosity’s mission
on Mars.
The purpose of Sunday’s initial use of the laser was as “target practice” for
the instrument. But scientists will examine the data they receive to
determine composition of the rock, which they dubbed “Coronation,” NASA said.
“We got a great spectrum of Coronation – lots of signal,” said ChemCam
principal investigator Roger Wiens of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in
New Mexico, where the instrument was developed. “After eight years of
building the instrument, it’s payoff time.”
Curiosity, a one-tonne, six-wheeled vehicle the size of a compact car, landed
inside a vast, ancient impact crater near Mars’ equator on August 6 after an
eight-month, 354-million-mile voyage through space. Its two-year mission is
aimed at determining whether or not the planet most like Earth could have
hosted microbial life.
The rover’s primary target is Mount Sharp, a towering mound of layered rock
rising from the floor of Gale Crater. But mission controllers are gradually
checking out Curiosity’s sophisticated array of instruments before sending
it on its first road trip across the Martian landscape.
The $2.5 billion Curiosity project marks NASA’s first astrobiology mission
since the Viking probes to Mars during the 1970s and the most advanced
robotic science lab sent to another world.
The technique employed by ChemCam has been used to examine the composition of
materials in other extreme environments, such as inside nuclear reactors and
on the sea floor.
The technology also has experimental applications in environmental monitoring
and cancer detection. But Sunday’s exercise, conducted during Curiosity’s
13th full day on Mars, was the first use in interplanetary exploration, NASA
said.
Article source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9486622/Mars-rover-Curiosity-fires-laser-at-Martian-rock.html