NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Begins Arm-Work Phase
After driving more than a football field's length since landing, NASA's Mars  rover Curiosity is spending several days preparing for full use of the tools on  its arm.
PASADENA, Calif.  -- After driving more than a football field's length since landing, NASA's Mars  rover Curiosity is spending several days preparing for full use of the tools on  its arm.Curiosity  extended its robotic arm Wednesday in the first of six to10 consecutive days of  planned activities to test the 7-foot (2.1-meter) arm and the tools it  manipulates."We will be  putting the arm through a range of motions and placing it at important 'teach  points' that were established during Earth testing, such as the positions for  putting sample material into the inlet ports for analytical instruments,"  said Daniel Limonadi of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.,  lead systems engineer for Curiosity's surface sampling and science system.  "These activities are important to get a better understanding for how the  arm functions after the long cruise to Mars and in the different temperature  and gravity of Mars, compared to earlier testing on Earth."Since the Mars  Science Laboratory spacecraft placed Curiosity inside Mars' Gale Crater on Aug.  5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT), the rover has driven a total of 358 feet (109 meters). The  drives have brought it about one-fourth of the way from the landing site, named  Bradbury Landing, to a location selected as the mission's first major science  destination, Glenelg."We knew at  some point we were going to need to stop and take a week or so for these  characterization activities," said JPL's Michael Watkins, Curiosity  mission manager. "For these checkouts, we need to turn to a particular  angle in relation to the sun and on flat ground. We could see before the latest  drive that this looked like a perfect spot to start these activities."The work at the  current location will prepare Curiosity and the team for using the arm to place  two of the science instruments onto rock and soil targets. In addition, the  activities represent the first steps in preparing to scoop soil, drill into  rocks, process collected samples and deliver samples into analytical  instruments.Checkouts in the  next several days will include using the turret's Mars Hand Lens Imager to  observe its calibration target and the Canadian-built Alpha Particle X-Ray  Spectrometer to read what chemical elements are present in the instrument's  calibration target."We're  still learning how to use the rover. It's such a complex machine -- the  learning curve is steep," said JPL's Joy Crisp, deputy project scientist  for the Mars Science Laboratory Project, which built and operates Curiosity.After the arm  characterization activities at the current site, Curiosity will proceed for a  few weeks eastward toward Glenelg. The science team selected that area as  likely to offer a good target for Curiosity's first analysis of powder  collected by drilling into a rock."We're  getting through a big set of characterization activities that will allow us to  give more decision-making authority to the science team," said Richard  Cook, Mars Science Laboratory project manager at JPL.Curiosity is one  month into a two-year prime mission on Mars. It will use 10 science instruments  to assess whether the selected study area ever has offered environmental  conditions favorable for microbial life. JPL manages the mission for NASA's  Science Mission Directorate in Washington.More information  about Curiosity is online at:http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl,http://www.nasa.gov/mslandhttp://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl. You can follow the mission on Facebook and on Twitter at:http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosityandhttp://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity.