Article Posted on : - Sep 14, 2012

This image from NASA's Curiosity rover shows the open inlet where powered rock and soil samples will be funneled down for analysis. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA (BNS): NASA's Mars Curiosity team has almost finished robotic arm tests in preparation for the rover to touch and examine its first Martian rock.

Tests with the 7-foot (2.1-metre) arm have allowed the mission team to gain confidence in the arm's precise maneuvering in Martian temperature and gravity conditions, NASA said.

During these activities, Curiosity has remained at a site it reached by its most recent drive on 5 September. The team will resume driving the rover this week and use its cameras to seek the first rock to touch with instruments on the arm.

Two science instruments -- a camera called Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) that can take close-up, colour images and a tool called Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) that determines the elemental composition of a target rock -- have passed preparatory tests at the rover's current location.

The instruments are mounted on a turret at the end of the arm and can be placed in contact with target rocks.

Curiosity is five weeks into a 2-year prime mission on Mars. It will use 10 science instruments to assess whether the selected field site inside Gale Crater has ever offered environmental conditions favourable for microbial life.