The Mars Curiosity Rover Opens Fire on Mars! | Bill Housley

The Mars Curiosity Rover Opens Fire on Mars!

Curiosity’s first test object, a rock now called “Coronation“, received several blasts of laser fire from the rover today to test its composition.

The laser excites a portion of the rock’s surface to a plasma so that a spectrometer can isolate the atoms that the rock is made of.

Also, the rock has a Twitter presence ( @N165Mars ) where you can read about more events that happen to it. Somebody mentioned in a Tweet that the rock should be glad that they didn’t drill it…

The rock Tweeted back, “There’s a drill!?”

~ by Bill Housley on August 19, 2012.

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