What has Curiosity found?

I guess we're finally there now. Welcome to Glenelg folks!

Right navigation view looking eastwards on sol 102 after the rover's 25.3m drive. Notice
the layering of sedimentary rocks here and that Curiosity is actually sitting on  a steep slope overlooking tilted
strata. (NASA/JPL/mosaic by me)

It's now 104 sols into the mission.

The rover arrived here after driving 27.2m eastwards since leaving the drift at Rocknest (CHIMRA is still holding a sample from the fifth scooping activity which will be used for analysis whenever its OK to do so). After driving almost 2m last week on Friday, the rover did a 'touch and go' operation on a rock dubbed 'Rocknest 3' the following day where the team commands for a short arm instrument readout for a short while before moving on. In this case they took a 10 minute readout with the APXS instrument before stowing the arm and driving 25.3m until they hit the area you see in the above mosaic. From here on the plan is to select a new target for potential drilling.

While writing this post, I caught a bunch of tweets from different people saying something about a 'discovery for the history books' made by the SAM instrument during its analysis of soil at Rocknest. Already I could feel a tingle of sensationalistic mystery creeping throughout my being. Grotzinger, the mission's chief scientist based in Caltech, Pasadena said that its (the discovery) 'gonna be one for the history books' but we'll have to wait while they recheck their measurements before they announce what exactly was all the hubbub for. According to SPACE.com's 20/11/2012 report:

The rover team won't be ready to announce just what SAM found for several weeks, NPR reported, as scientists want to check and double-check the results. Indeed, Grotzinger confirmed to SPACE.com that the news will come out at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which takes place Dec. 3-7 in San Francisco. 

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is where all the action will be as far as this piece of Martian mystery is concerned though you can be assured that whatever it might be it might very well be interesting only to the geologists. Unless they've found methane... but don't count on it. Stay curious!