Curiosity rover completes 4,000 days on Mars: NASA
Mars had the conditions to support microbial life.
The car-sized rover has been gradually ascending the base of 5-kilometre-tall Mount Sharp, whose layers formed in different periods of Martian history and offer a record of how the planet's climate changed over time.
It recently drilled its 39th sample and dropped the pulverised rock into its belly for detailed analysis.
The sample was collected from a target nicknamed «Sequoia».
Scientists hope the sample will reveal more about how the climate and habitability of Mars evolved as this region became enriched in sulphates — minerals that likely formed in salty water that was evaporating as Mars first began drying up billions of years ago.
Eventually, Mars's liquid water disappeared for good.
«The types of sulphate and carbonate minerals that Curiosity's instruments have identified in the last year help us understand what Mars was like so long ago.
We've been anticipating these results for decades, and now Sequoia will tell us even more,» said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission, in a statement.
Despite having driven almost 32 kilometres through a punishingly cold environment bathed in dust and radiation since 2012, Curiosity remains strong.
Engineers are currently working to resolve an issue with one of the rover's main «eyes» — the 34 mm focal length left camera of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument.
In addition to providing colour images of the rover's surroundings, each of Mastcam's two cameras helps scientists determine from afar the composition of rocks by the wavelengths of light, or spectra, they reflect in different colours.
Mission engineers also continue to
