You’re looking at the next rock that NASA’s Curiosity rover will shoot with its powerful laser and X-ray spectrometer as part of its first
close-up science investigation on Mars.
The rover has gone about 950 feet from its landing site, roughly halfway to its first target area, Glenelg. During its drive, Curiosity has been
looking for a rock to use its ChemCam and APXS instruments on in tandem. ChemCam is the laser shooter on the top of the rover while the APXS is a
spectrometer sitting at the end of Curiosity’s arm that bombards a target with X-rays. Both instruments determine a material’s composition but
over different scales — ChemCam looks at a very small 0.04-inch area while APXS has a wider 0.6-inch range.
The instruments will be trained on the pyramid-shaped rock seen in the image above, which has been nicknamed Jake Matijevic after a recently deceased
engineer who worked on every NASA rover. The rock appears to be basaltic and fairly uniform. In addition to learning about the lonely-looking rock,
differences between the measurements from the two instruments will help calibrate them for future use, said Caltech geologist John Grotzinger,
Curiosity project scientist, during a NASA press conference today.
Ummm, pyramid shaped rock? Really? Oh well................Looks photo-shopped to me and a bad one, but that's just me....I'm weird like that.
www.wired.com...edit on 19-9-2012 by CaptainBeno because: (no reason
given)
edit on 19-9-2012 by CaptainBeno because: (no reason given)
