Curiosity Update News (DRILL SYSTEM)

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Curiosity rover has, for the first time, used a drill carried at the end of its robotic arm to bore into a flat, veiny rock on Mars and collect a sample from its interior. This is the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars.

The fresh hole, about 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) wide and 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) deep in a patch of fine-grained sedimentary bedrock, can be seen in images and other data Curiosity beamed to Earth Saturday. The rock is believed to hold evidence about long-gone wet environments. In pursuit of that evidence, the rover will use its laboratory instruments to analyze rock powder collected by the drill.

"The most advanced planetary robot ever designed is now a fully operating analytical laboratory on Mars," said John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for the agency's Science Mission Directorate. "This is the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August, another proud day for America."

For the next several days, ground controllers will command the rover's arm to carry out a series of steps to process the sample, ultimately delivering portions to the instruments inside.

"We commanded the first full-depth drilling, and we believe we have collected sufficient material from the rock to meet our objectives of hardware cleaning and sample drop-off," said Avi Okon, drill cognizant engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Rock powder generated during drilling travels up flutes on the bit. The bit assembly has chambers to hold the powder until it can be transferred to the sample-handling mechanisms of the rover's Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) device.

Before the rock powder is analyzed, some will be used to scour traces of material that may have been deposited onto the hardware while the rover was still on Earth, despite thorough cleaning before launch.

"We'll take the powder we acquired and swish it around to scrub the internal surfaces of the drill bit assembly," said JPL's Scott McCloskey, drill systems engineer. "Then we'll use the arm to transfer the powder out of the drill into the scoop, which will be our first chance to see the acquired sample."

"Building a tool to interact forcefully with unpredictable rocks on Mars required an ambitious development and testing program," said JPL's Louise Jandura, chief engineer for Curiosity's sample system. "To get to the point of making this hole in a rock on Mars, we made eight drills and bored more than 1,200 holes in 20 types of rock on Earth."

Inside the sample-handling device, the powder will be vibrated once or twice over a sieve that screens out any particles larger than six-thousandths of an inch (150 microns) across. Small portions of the sieved sample will fall through ports on the rover deck into the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument and the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument. These instruments then will begin the much-anticipated detailed analysis.

The rock Curiosity drilled is called "John Klein" in memory of a Mars Science Laboratory deputy project manager who died in 2011. Drilling for a sample is the last new activity for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project, which is using the car-size Curiosity rover to investigate whether an area within Mars' Gale Crater has ever offered an environment favorable for life.

JPL manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For images and more information about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity andhttp://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

 

 

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

2013-052

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Orion Exploration HD Animation | Nasa and Scientist X

Orion Exploration

Orion Exploration, L.L.C. is a privately held exploration and production company based in Tulsa,
OK, which was
founded to pursue horizontal coal bed methane (CBM) prospects in the Arkoma Basin. In 2004,
Orion shifted focus
 to horizontally drilling Paleozoic-aged carbonate rocks in north-central Oklahoma. Currently,
Orion is focused
on the early-stage acquisition and drilling of large-scale internally generated prospects in the
 Mid-Continent.
We use technology to reduce exploration risk in exploring rich, fertile basins where
hydrocarbons are known to
exist.

Orion’s staff has over 100 years of experience, including geologists, landmen, engineers and
other technical front
office personnel devoted to internal prospect generation and identification of potential drilling
locations.

Orion’s current horizontal drilling exploration activity is focused on developing oil reserves from
Mississippian
reservoirs in several core areas, in both Oklahoma and Kansas, as well as utilizing dewatering
 techniques in
hydrocarbon extraction from the Hunton reservoir in a core area located in Central Oklahoma. 

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UFO Appears Before Felix Baumgartner Jump

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Neil Tyson Talks About Apophis | End of World 2029

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NASA - Talks About Nibiru

Nibiru is the name given to a large planetary object that is supposedly going to crash into Earth at some point in the not-so-distant future. This event is commonly known as the Nibiru cataclysm. Some link the idea of Nibiru with the Mayan calendar’s “reset” date of December 21, 2012. Some believe Nibiru is what the Bible refers to as “Wormwood” (Revelation 8:10-11). Is there any truth to the Nibiru cataclysm / end of the world theory?

First, we’ll look at Revelation 8:10-11, since this passage is cited by some believers in the Nibiru cataclysm. It reads, “The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water—the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.” Many Bible interpreters believe this passage refers to some kind of interplanetary object, likely a meteor or comet, crashing into Earth. While this sounds similar to the Nibiru idea, the object the Bible describes is much smaller. If a planet-sized object were to crash into Earth, it would do far more than poison the waters. It would very likely destroy the entire planet. So, no, what the Bible refers to as “Wormwood” is not the same thing as Nibiru.

All reputable astronomers and planetary scientists dismiss the idea of a planet-sized object crashing into Earth in the foreseeable future. While ancient Babylonian mythology contains some parallels to the Nibiru concept, the modern Nibiru theory was invented by a woman in the 1990s after she was supposedly contacted by extraterrestrials called Zetas. She has since predicted the arrival of Nibiru multiple times. As each of her cataclysmic predictions fails to occur, she simply adjusts the date. The origin of the Nibiru theory is yet another reason to reject it.

The idea of a Nibiru cataclysm is not supported by the Bible or by science. Like the Mayan prophecy and other end-of-the-world theories, the Nibiru idea is a result of irrational fear and biblical ignorance. The Bible gives a great deal of information about what will happen in the end times. While the idea of a space object crashing into Earth has biblical support, the Bible also makes it clear that the world will not end due to Nibiru or anything else impacting Earth. The world will end when God makes all things new: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…”

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