NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

This patch of bedrock, called "Cumberland," has been picked as the next drilling target for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

By Mike Wall
Space.com

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity will perform its second-ever drilling operation soon, boring into a knobby section of bedrock dubbed "Cumberland," space agency officials announced Thursday.

Cumberland lies just 9 feet (2.75 meters) west of the rock called "John Klein," where Curiosity drilled a 2.5-inch-deep (6.4 centimeters) hole back in February. The rover's analysis of John Klein samples allowed mission scientists to conclude that Mars was capable of supporting microbial life billions of years ago.

The main purpose of drilling a second hole nearby is to confirm this big discovery, researchers said. [Ancient Mars Could Have Supported Life (Photos)]

"Primarily, it will be to duplicate the results from the first hole, because they were so exciting and, in some cases, unexpected that the people who run the experiments just want to make sure it's really correct before writing all the papers up," Curiosity deputy project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told Space.com earlier this week.

The Curiosity rover will make the short drive to Cumberland in the coming days, NASA officials said. Like John Klein, the rock shows many signs of exposure to liquid water in the distant past. For example, both rocks are shot through with mineral veins and studded with erosion-resistant bumps.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona

This map shows the location of "Cumberland," the second rock-drilling target for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, in relation to the rover's first drilling target, "John Klein."

"The bumps are concretions, or clumps of minerals, which formed when water soaked the rock long ago," NASA officials wrote in an update Thursday. "Analysis of a sample containing more material from these concretions could provide information about the variability within the rock layer that includes both John Klein and Cumberland."

After Curiosity finishes drilling at Cumberland and wraps up a few other science operations nearby, the rover will likely begin the 5-mile (8 kilometers) trek to the base of Mount Sharp, officials said. 

This mysterious mountain rises 3.4 miles (5.5 km) into the Martian sky from the center of Gale Crater, where Curiosity touched down last August. Mount Sharp's foothills are the rover's ultimate science destination.

The mountain's base shows signs of long-ago exposure to liquid water, providing an intriguing target. The mission team also wants Curiosity to read the Red Planet's environmental history like a book as it climbs up Mount Sharp's lower reaches.

Drilling at Cumberland will be Curiosity's first big science operation in a while. Mission controllers didn't send any commands to Curiosity for most of April, because Earth and Mars were on opposite sides of the sun from each other in an alignment known as a Mars solar conjunction.

Curiosity monitored Red Planet radiation and weather during conjunction and also performed some other relatively simple science tasks using a set of commands sent up in advance, Vasavada said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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NASA / JPL / MSSS / Marco Di Lorenzo / Ken Kremer

This self-portrait, composed of more than 50 images taken by Curiosity's MAHLI camera on February 3 shows the rover at the John Klein drill site. A drill hole is visible at bottom left.

By Mike Wall
Space.com

After cooling its heels for a month on the Red Planet, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is gearing up for lots of action in the coming weeks.

Curiosity's handlers sent no commands to the rover for most of April, because Mars was on the opposite side of the sun from Earth at the time. But this planetary alignment, known as a Mars solar conjunction, is now over, and the mission team is planning to drill into a Red Planet rock soon and then send Curiosity off on an epic, miles-long trek to the base of a huge and mysterious mountain.

"A couple of weeks to move to the site and drill, and then the experiments themselves can take also a couple of weeks — that's about the time scale we're looking at," said Curiosity deputy project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "And then we'd hopefully get going." [Curiosity's Latest Amazing Mars Photos]

He stressed, however, that this timeframe could shift depending on how the drilling operation goes, and what Curiosity discovers.

Curiosity healthy after 'spring break'
The Curiosity rover wasn't idle during conjunction. It continued monitoring Martian weather and radiation and performed some relatively simple science work using commands sent up in advance, Vasavada said.

"That all went fine — it kind of executed flawlessly a long set of preplanned activities," he told Space.com. "We had never planned 30 days at once (before), so that was a relief."

But things have picked up since mission controllers got back in touch with Curiosity late last week. They've already uploaded a minor software update to the rover, which emerged from conjunction in fine health, Vasavada said.

Curiosity continues to operate on its backup, or B-side, computer, which it switched to after a glitch knocked out its primary computer (or A-side) in late February.

The rover team has still not fully figured out what happened to the A-side, but engineers have made significant troubleshooting progress. For example, Curiosity would have been OK if an issue during conjunction had forced the rover to swap back over to the A-side computer, Vasavada said.

Drilling another hole
Curiosity touched down inside Mars' huge Gale Crater last August, kicking off a two-year surface mission to determine if the Red Planet could ever have supported microbial life.

The rover team has already checked off this primary goal, announcing in March that a spot dubbed Yellowknife Bay was indeed habitable billions of years ago. Scientists reached this conclusion after studying Curiosity's analyses of material pulled from a 2.5-inch-deep (6.4 centimeters) hole the rover drilled into a Red Planet outcrop. [Ancient Mars Could Have Supported Life (Photos)]

Now that conjunction's over, the mission team wants to drill another hole in a nearby rock, to confirm and perhaps extend the exciting results gleaned from the first drilling activity.

"Probably in the next week or two, we will slightly move the rover to a new location, which the science team is actively choosing right now," Vasavada said. "Primarily, it will be to duplicate the results from the first hole, because they were so exciting and, in some cases, unexpected that the people who run the experiments just want to make sure it's really correct before writing all the papers up."

"Slightly move" likely means a few meters or so, he said, adding that the second drilling activity might target intriguing mineral veins or concretions that the team avoided the first time around, not wanting to complicate the drill's maiden operation.

Off to Mount Sharp
Once the drilling and subsequent analyses are complete, the team plans to start the long trek to Mount Sharp, the mysterious 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) mountain that rises from Gale Crater's center.

Mount Sharp's foothills, which lie about 5 miles (8 km) away from Yellowknife Bay, were identified as Curiosity's main destination before the rover's November 2011 launch.

Mars-orbiting spacecraft have spotted signs that the mountain's base was exposed to liquid water long ago, and the team wants Curiosity to read the Red Planet's environmental history like a book as it climbs up Mount Sharp's lower reaches.

Curiosity has taken plenty of time to check out interesting rocks and riverbeds near its landing site thus far, putting just 2,300 feet (700 meters) on its odometer to date. But the long trip to Mount Sharp will force a shift in the rover team's mindset, requiring them to ignore some intriguing features in the interest of making tracks.

Mission scientists are already starting to plan Curiosity's route to Mount Sharp, a process that involves identifying high-priority science targets along the way. Still, there's no way the team will be able to look at everything that draws its interest.

"One of our engineers said it's like putting your family in the car to go to Disneyland," Vasavada said. "Along the way, there's the biggest ball of twine, and a little dinosaur museum and all this stuff. But you have to tell your kids, 'We can't do everything, or we'll never get to Disneyland.'"

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on SpaceE.com.

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Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

WISSARD Project

Lake Whillans lies beneath a 66-foot (20-meter) wide ice stream that moves about a meter per day, as opposed to something like a meter per year for the surrounding icecap. Little is known about the possible relation between ice streams on the surface and subglacial river systems, which have only been discovered – and charted through radar – over the past couple of decades.

By Becky Oskin
LiveScience

Blobs and smears of microbial life growing in clear plastic disks are confirmation of a community living in a lake buried beneath the Antarctic ice, scientists studying the lake have said.

Water retrieved from subglacial Lake Whillans contains about 1,000 bacteria per milliliter (about a fifth of a teaspoon) of lake water, biologist John Priscu of Montana State University told Nature News. Petri dishes swiped with samples of the lake water are already growing colonies of microbes at a good rate, Nature News reported.

Lake Whillans is 2,625 feet (800 meters) below the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. After breaking through the ice on Jan. 28, researchers are returning to the United States with 8 gallons (30 liters) of lake water and eight sediment cores from the lake bottom. These samples will be tested for signs of microbial life, which could shed light on the types of extreme life that is able to thrive in such harsh environments.

Reach Becky Oskin at boskin@techmedianetwork.com. Follow her on Twitter @beckyoskin. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

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