The Curiosity bird of passage has undertaken its first elaborated X - ray depth psychology of martian backbone , in parliamentary procedure towork outwhat sort of minerals it control and how its soils first came into being .
On the run - up to Curiosity ’s launching , scientists shrank down the X - re equipment needed to analyze territory samples – which normally take up the same space a domestic refrigerator . NASA organise , however , clever thing that they are , manage to squeeze the technology down in to the size of a shoebox , mean that samples could be analyzed on the major planet for the first fourth dimension .
The gimmick , called CheMin , take a sample distribution of guts – about the sizing of a pill – and rock it 2,000 time a 2d , all the while bombarding it with x - ray . The rays then come home the grain , and the way in which they diffract the radiation sickness can tell scientists about their constituent atom .
cultivate on sample distribution taken from Mars ’s Rocknest part , Curiosityhas discoveredthat the soils in the field are extremely similar to those found around the Mauna Kea buckler volcano in Hawaii back here on Earth . In fact , it ’s identified crystalline feldspar , pyroxenes , and olivine – all of which are found on Earth . Not massively surprising , but interesting nonetheless . Now come on , Curiosity , no time to waste : back to work . [ NASAviaWIRED ]
Image byNASA
MarsMars roverNASA
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