NASA’s Curiosity rover is continuing to perform experiments in Mars’ Gale Crater, even after more than 4,200 days on the martian surface. On Curiosity’s sol (the name given to a martian day) 4,214, which corresponds to June 12, 2024, the rover was given commands to drill a 0.63-inch (1.6 centimeters) hole in a rock dubbed “Mammoth Lakes.” The name comes from a town in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains.
The first thing the rover does is to conduct a pre-load test, which determines whether the drill is working and also if the chosen rock is stable enough to drill into. Unfortunately, it was not. So, the science team, after much discussion, moved the rover slightly and tried again on sol 4,222 (June 21).
As team member Alex Innanen, atmospheric scientist at York University, wrote in a NASA blog post, “All our patient waiting has been rewarded, as we were greeted with the news that our drill attempt was successful.”
But drilling the hole is only the first step. Next, the rover’s alpha-particle X-ray spectrometer must collect data. To do that, an instrument brushes and smooths the surface, and then the reading is taken. After that, the team determines whether or not a small sample of what was drilled will be delivered to the rover’s Chemistry and Mineralogy X-ray Diffraction (CheMin) instrument.
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