The Curiosity rover
has been exploring Mars since early August, and has taken many beautiful photos
of the Martian landscape. In early October, Curiosity took its first scoop of
Martian soil to be placed inside SAM, an instrument which analyzes the composition
of Martian soil. With the scoop of soil in hand, curiosity photographed the
area where the sample was taken, and stumbled upon a strange looking shiny
object (center of above image). At
first, astronomers who analyzed the photograph thought the object was a small
piece of shrapnel from when the rover landed.
This brought testing to a halt, because astronomers did not want to run
a piece of sharp shrapnel through a very delicate machine meant to filter and
analyze soil. About a week prior, Curiosity photographed a piece of plastic
with ChemCam that likely broke off during it's descent, so it was very possible
that this was another piece. Just to be safe, Curiosity dumped the soil. Upon
closer inspection of this shiny rock, astronomers realized that this was not a
piece of metal or plastic, but rather a strange rock of Martian origin. What
these rocks are made of is still unclear, but Curiosity can now safely use SAM
to analyze soil samples and hopefully find out the composition of these rocks!
Image credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
