Curiosity rover examines strange ‘pyramidal’ rock on Mars

While on its 400-metre journey to the Glenelg area, east of the Bradbury landing area on Mars, the Curiosity rover discovered an interesting pyramid-shaped rock.

Measuring 40 cm wide by 25 cm tall, the NASA JPL operators decided to name the rock 'Jake Matijevic', as a memorial to Jacob Matijevic (1947-2012), one of the engineers of the rover, who passed just a few days after Curiosity arrived on Mars.

They will use 'Jake' to test the functions of Curiosity's arm-mounted instrument, the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer, which was provided by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

The Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) was designed by Ralf Gellert, a physics professor at the University of Guelph. He is also the principle investigator of the APXS team, which includes another six scientists from the University of Guelph, three from the University of New Brunswick, two from NASA JPL, and researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Cornell University, UC San Diego, and the Canadian Space Agency.

To find out what 'Jake' is made of, the APXS will fire a stream of alpha particles — helium atom nuclei — at it, and read the spectrum of the X-rays that 'Jake' will release as a result. They will also cross-check the results with those from the mast-mounted Chemistry and Camera Instrument (ChemCam).

When Curiosity found the rock, it had only made it about half way to the Glenelg area, about 200 metres, after driving 10 days.

The reason for such a short distance in such a long time?

The rover is designed to drive with an average speed of 30 metres per hour, and a top speed of 90 metres per hour — not exactly built for speed. The NASA JPL drivers also take their time to run through diagnostics and make sure they have an understanding of what the rover is seeing at any time. When you're operating a multi-million dollar robot on another planet, an average of 225 million kilometres away, with no way of getting a repair team out there, should there be an accident, you want to be careful about what you're doing.

An interesting aspect of all this is the concept of 'living on Mars time'. Coordinating operations from one planet to control something on another planet, the scientists here need to adjust their daily schedule so that they can operate the rover during the Martian day.

For the people on Earth, that means working some very odd hours. Nick Boyd and Glynis Perrett, two of the APXS team at the University of Guelph, were working in the "operations centre" of the University of Guelph's MacNaughton Building (the physics building) at 1:40 p.m. local time, but that was 6:31 a.m. Mars time. With this strange schedule messing with their natural body rhythms, it's a good thing they use such caution with the rover.

Next on the rover's schedule?

"The next near-term objective is to find a patch of loose soil that will be used to test our scooping ability and to clean off our sampling tools," said Ashwin Vasavada, deputy project scientist with the Curiosity team, according to the Los Angeles Times. "These near-term objectives will help us get ready for our first major science target, the light-toned fractured unit at Glenelg. We hope to reach there within the next month or two."

When Curiosity reaches Glenelg, it will examine the three types of terrain that intersect in the area. There is a lighter-coloured area that has been found to retain its heat long after the Sun has set on the rover, and the NASA JPL team is excited to discover why. The team will also choose a rock in the area to drill into, so they can examine the powder they gather from it.