Engineers plan to carry out initial tests of the rover's drive-and-steering systems next week, with science operations focusing on getting as much data as possible from the rocks and soil at the landing site. Of particular interest is an area where Curiosity's sky crane rockets blasted away topsoil as the rover was lowered to the surface, exposing underlying rocks to its instruments.
One of those instruments, known as ChemCam, uses a powerful laser to vaporize rock and soil samples that are then analyzed by a telescopic spectrometer. Its first target will be a rock near the rover with a smooth, flat surface,
"There's a high-power laser that briefly projects several megawatts onto basically a pinhead-size spot on the surface of Mars," said Roger Wiens, the principle investigator. "With that much power density, it creates a plasma, or a little ball of flame or spark. ... So the telescope observes this flash and we can (observe) these flashes up to about 25 feet away. The telescope then takes that light and directs it into a spectrometer."
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