What has NASA found in the five scoops? Image: NASA.gov |
BIG NEWS LOOMING—NASA scientists involved with Mars
Curiosity Rover have indicated something is up.
They won’t tell us fearing it may be a false alarm. NASA.gov usually does a good job of updating
its webpage with new Curiosity rover shots.
But for the past few weeks it has stopped posting new images. The site has paused on the following photo,
near five scoops of soil.
What was in the scoops?
The neighborhood hasn’t been this excited about
scoops since Baskin-Robbins ice cream store shut down.
Did they find something here that could prove life
exists on other planets? Or, did they
find a piece of other failed missions?
Whatever it is NASA is mum but has promised to
communicate sometime after the first of December.
They have said the new finding has the potential to
rewrite the history books.
If so, what amazing good fortune to be alive at such
a time.
Here’s what NASA.gov
Curiosity image gallery has paused on:
Five Bites Into Mars
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity used a mechanism on its
robotic arm to dig up five scoopfuls of material from a patch of dusty sand
called "Rocknest," producing the five bite-mark pits visible in this
image from the rover's left Navigation Camera (Navcam). Each of the pits is
about 2 inches (5 centimeters) wide.
The fifth scoopful at Rocknest -- leaving the upper
middle bite mark -- was
collected during the mission's
93rd Martian day, or sol (Nov. 9, 2012). This image
was taken later that same sol. A sample from that fifth scoop was analyzed over
the next two sols by Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of
instruments inside the rover. A second sample from the same scoopful of
material was delivered to SAM for analysis on Sol 96 (Nov. 12). No further
scooping of soil samples is planned at Rocknest.
The first Rocknest scoop was collected during Sol 61
(Oct. 7). Fine sand and dust from that scoopful and two subsequent ones were
used for scrubbing the inside surfaces of chambers in the sample-handling
mechanism on the arm. Samples from scoops three, four and five were analyzed by
the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument inside the rover.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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