Curiosity Begins Action with First Scooped Sample

The team operating curiosity has decided that they will proceed with using rover's first scoop of Martian material.

Plans for Sol 64, call for transferring the scoopful of sand and dust into the mechanism for sieving and portioning samples, and vibrating it vigorously to clean internal surfaces of the mechanism.

The team will discard the first and second scooped samples after use, as they are being used only for cleaning process. Following which, other samples scooped from the same "Rocknest" area will be handed over to the analytical instruments.

The team will also initiate the investigation of the small, bright object that is believed to have come from the rover. It might resume between the first and second scoop.

 The team has assessed the object as likely to be some type of plastic wrapper material, such as a tube used around a wire, possibly having fallen onto the rover from the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft's descent stage during the landing in August.

The list of activities included under Sol 63 is extended weather measurements by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station, or REMS. In addition to this Sol 63 planning also called for panoramic imaging by the Mast Camera, or Mastcam, in the early morning light of Sol 64, before uplink of Sol 64 commands.

Sol 63 is the Mars local mean solar time at Gale Crater.