Curiosity Rover Drills Rock Packed With Possible Crystals on Mars

NASA’s Curiosity rover has drilled its 49th hole in Martian rock, a target named Nazca. According to a NASA mission blog written by planetary mineralogist Susanne P. Schwenzer of The Open University in the United Kingdom, the team picked the block because it holds abundant disc-shaped features that may be crystals.

The drilling covered Sols 5050-5055, with an Earth planning date of Oct. 23, 2026. Results from the drilled sample are still on their way from Mars to Earth.

Why did the team choose this rock?

Schwenzer wrote that the rover had returned to an area where it earlier found disc-shaped inclusions in the rocks. Scientists interpret these as potential crystals. If they are indeed crystals, she explained, comparing them with similar crystals on Earth could point to the environmental conditions in which the rock formed.

The team’s excitement was high, she wrote, because the block it found has plenty of these features. A good drilling candidate, in her words, is first of all one that contains many of them.

What had to happen before the drill touched the rock?

Two safety checks came first. The rover had to pass a stability test, which confirms that all of its wheels stand on solid ground before the robotic arm is extended. It then passed a preload test, which checks how stable the rock is and what forces the arm experiences when the drill bit presses into the stone.

After both tests were passed, the drill campaign went ahead successfully and produced the hole called Nazca.

What did the instruments do around the drilling?

Before drilling, the team examined the block with three instruments: APXS, MAHLI and ChemCam. After the hole was made, the rover dropped the drilled sample into an instrument called CheMin. Those results are expected to reach the team over the coming weekend, according to the blog.

ChemCam also collected passive spectral data and active LIBS measurements of the tailings, the loose material left around the hole. It took a further LIBS measurement down the wall of the drill hole itself.

What else was Curiosity studying that week?

ChemCam fired its laser at a dark pebble called Palpala. The team has been watching for such pebbles for some time and has found that they do not all share the same composition. To understand where they come from, scientists measure them whenever one within reach is large enough. A pebble that is too small can shift when the laser hits it, so the team has to look for bigger ones. Another pebble, called Puna, was identified in Friday’s planning.

A target called Llama received a LIBS depth profile. The goal is to find out whether the observations from the first such profile hold up at other locations or vary from place to place. A target called Pacaya was another measurement of the disc-shaped forms that drew the rover back to this region.

ChemCam also has several long-distance RMI images in the plan. All of them focus on two buttes, Mishe Mokwa and Cordillera, which the team has found interesting for a long time because of the sedimentary structures and textures they reveal.

Why does it matter?

The disc-shaped features are the reason the rover came back to this area. If they turn out to be crystals, they could serve as indicators of environmental conditions in the place where they formed, which is the kind of clue that helps scientists reconstruct a planet’s past. The sample now inside CheMin is the next step toward finding out what these features are made of.

The finding is not settled. The team describes the discs only as potential crystals, and the analysis of the sample has not yet reached Earth. For now, Nazca is best understood as a carefully chosen sample that gives scientists a chance to test their interpretation, not as a confirmed discovery.

What happens next?

The CheMin results are expected over the weekend following the report. Meanwhile, the pebble measurements, the depth profiles and the long-distance imaging of the two buttes continue as part of the same work.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by NASA