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Course: NASA > Unit 3
Lesson 4: Curiosity rover: discoveries- Curiosity has landed
- Curiosity descent
- Systems check
- Curiosity's first drive
- Navigation update
- Observations
- Discovery: Streambed
- First CheMin results
- Preparation for holidays
- Calcium-rich deposits found
- Results of first drilling
- Mars' bygone atmosphere
- 'Spring Break' over: commanding resumes
- Rover ready to switch gears
- Trek to Mt. Sharp begins
- Dating younger rocks
- Curiosity completes its first martian year
- A softer trek to mount sharp
- A taste of mount sharp
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Results of first drilling
Minerals present in the drill sample provided evidence of a previously habitable environment.
. Created by NASA.
. Created by NASA.
Want to join the conversation?
- If we have made robots which have gone to mars why haven't we had any manned missons ? to costly ? don't have the right technology ? to much risk for the astronauts ?(3 votes)
- It may be because of the fuel and the amount of energy needed for the crew comfort.(4 votes)
- Wait, what is the John Klein Rock? Please help me! 😃(2 votes)
- the John Klein Rock is a sedimentary rock(5 votes)
- Is Curiosity on Mars now?(2 votes)
- Technically it will never leave, but it is still operational now (4/18/2017)(2 votes)
- Have the three rovers Opportunity, Curiosity, and Spirit ever met?(2 votes)
- no they haven't (sad... i bet they feel lonely).NASA tried to cover most of mars with the rovers so they made them land at different places(2 votes)
- How fast can curiosity go?(1 vote)
- why did they call the rover curiosity(2 votes)
- they like using code names for the rovers(1 vote)
- what if all of these other planets are planets we used to be on an we move because it goes down(1 vote)
- There is no evidence that this might be the case. There are some who theorize that the origins of life on earth, possibly bascteria or replicating proteins may have come from a source other than earth..(1 vote)
- Will they ever send rovers to other planets besides Mars?(1 vote)
- Wait, if water(the ingredients of life) is already on mars, then why is there no life there today?(1 vote)
- No,it's because all the water dried or froze, there might have been life on Mars, but without water, nothing can live(1 vote)
- why is curiosity so slow?(0 votes)
- So it does not damage itself while moving.(2 votes)
Video transcript
Hi, I'm Joel Hurowitz, a scientist with the
surface sampling system team and this is your Curiosity rover report. This week the Curiosity science team released
its initial findings from its first ever drilled sample on Mars. This sample was collected from the “John
Klein” drill site, which is located about 500 meters east of where we landed about 7
months ago. Curiosity obtained her first drill sample
and passed that sample on to her onboard analytical lab instruments, called CheMin and SAM. These powerful instruments tell us about what
minerals are present in these rocks and whether they contain the ingredients necessary to
sustain life as we know it. What the Curiosity team has found is incredibly
exciting. When we combine what we have learned from
our remote sensing and contact science instruments with the data that’s coming in from CheMin
and SAM, we get a picture of an ancient watery environment, which would have been habitable
had life been present in it. As an example, the information that we’re
getting from the CheMin instrument, tells us that the minerals that are present in this
lakebed sedimentary rock at John Klein are very different from just about anything we’ve
ever analyzed before on Mars. And they tell us that the John Klein rock
was deposited in a fresh water environment. This is an important contrast with other sedimentary
environments that we‘ve visited on Mars, like the Meridiani Planum landing site where
the Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, has been operating since 2004. At that site, the sedimentary rocks record
evidence of an environment that was only wet on a very intermittent basis, and when it
was, the waters that were there were highly acidic, very salty, and not favorable for
the survival of organic compounds. This is in direct contrast to the fresh water
environment we’re seeing here at the John Klein Site. The SAM instrument is telling us that these
rocks contained all of the ingredients necessary for a habitable environment. We found carbon, sulfur and oxygen, all present
and a number of other elements in states that life could have taken advantage of. All in all, these few tablespoons of powder
from a Martian rock have provided the Curiosity science team with an exciting new dataset
that tells us that Gale Crater, and perhaps all of Mars, contained habitable environments. This is an incredible success for the Curiosity
mission to Gale, and the science team is looking forward to digging deeper into Mars’ ancient
watery past in the weeks, months, and years ahead. This has been your Curiosity rover report. Please check back for more updates.