MAHLI and APXS strike

From the looks of the sol 46 images (which you can easily access yourself by the following the ‘raw images’ link above), APXS and MAHLI have successfully made contact with Jake Matijevic.

MAHLI contact, sol 46 navcam (NASA/JPL)

The images from MAHLI are simply breathtaking. The one below is a close-up of the surface of the surface of Jake and as you can see, it’s quite dusty. 

Sol 46 (NASA/JPL/MSSS)

That is why the rover carries a brushing device with stainless steel bristles to remove the dust and get the ‘true’ chemical reading of the rock below the dust surface. It’s worth noting that that isn’t necessary for the laser-shooting ChemCam as it can just burn through the layers (each burn reveals the chemical composition of different layers of the sample).

Jake Matijevic in colour (NASA/JPL/MSSS)

But they didn’t brush for this contact yet because as scientists the rover team is interested in the seemingly mundane of things, including the dust. By taking chemical readings before and after brushing (I don’t know IF they’re going to do that yet) they can extract quite a bit of information in terms of subtracting the known chemical composition of rock surface+dust from the composition of the rock surface only to derive an accurate reading of the dust only. I emphasize rock surface because the surface’s composition may not be a true reflection of the rock’s composition because the there may have been some alteration by the surrounding elements of the rock’s surface. The unexposed, unadulterated interior can only be accessed by coring with Curiosity’s drill and extracting some materials for analysis by the rover’s scientific arsenal.

MAHLI has shot some artefacts on the rover, including a nice mounted plaque on the rover showing signatures of the top bananas in the US government who were involved in making the mission possible directly or indirectly.

Sol 45 MAHLI shot of signature plaque (NASA/JPL/MSSS)

The plaque includes signatures from POTUS, the vice POTUS, the director of the Office of science and Technology policy, NASA’s administrator, the associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate, the director of the Planetary Systems division, the director of the Mars Exploration Program, the program scientist of the Mars Exploration Program and the program executive of the Mars Science Laboratory. Smashing stuff!