Friday 4th January 2013 Sol 147

Curiosity and the science and engineering teams are getting back up to full activity after the Christmas and New Year break. 

Preparing for drilling and choosing a suitable drill site will be the next major activity over the following few months and will involve the co-ordinated use of a lot of Curiosity’s instruments on the robotic arm and within the rover. 

The drill rotates at up to 150 rpm, with a dual hammer, percusion action and the hole will be about 5 cm deep.  The resultant powder travels up an auger in the drill and into a chamber with a  connection to the CHIMRA sample processing unit from where we can do X-ray diffraction with CHEMIN and gas-chromatography mass spectrometry with SAM.