NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has delivered the first Martian dirt sample to its onboard chemistry laboratory, testing out gear that forms the scientific heart of the $2.5 billion robot.
Curiosity's huge robotic arm dropped a pinch of Red Planet dirt into the rover's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, or SAM. SAM can detect organic compounds — the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it — and is thus key to Curiosity's mission, which seeks to determine if Mars has ever been capable of supporting microbial life.
SAM ingested its first soil sample on Nov. 9 at a sandy site the rover team has dubbed Rocknest. The instrument analyzed the dirt over the following two d…
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More About: Curiosity, Mars, Mars rover, NASA, space
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