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Mars rover spends holidays at 'Grandma's House'

Curiosity checks out intriguing Martian terrain with that informal name

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Image: Mars rover Curiosity
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Curiosity spent its first Christmas on Mars on "Grandma's House," a previously unexplored part of Yellowknife Bay in the Gale Crater.
By
updated 12/27/2012 6:29:06 PM ET 2012-12-27T23:29:06

NASA's Curiosity rover worked through the holiday season on Mars by taking a close look at an intriguing bit of Martian terrain, a region scientists have lovingly nicknamed "Grandma's House."

The Curiosity rover is currently parked inside Yellowknife Bay, a shallow depression of odd terrain nestled inside the rover's vast Gale crater landing site. "Grandma's House" is an informal name for Curiosity's holiday spot inside the bay, rover team member Colette Lohr said in a NASA video.

"This is a really exciting time for the team because we've started to do what we call discovery-driven planning," said Lohr, Curiosity tactical uplink lead at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "And this is, in a sense, when we hand the rover keys to the science team."

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Curiosity's handlers spent two days preloading the rover with instructions for science observations over 11 Martian days (or sols), which allowed rover team members to spend the year-end holidays with their families and friends.

The rover didn't get much of a vacation. It spent Christmas and Christmas Eve recording a 360-degree panoramic view of Yellowknife Bay that should give researchers an even clearer view of the area, Lohr said.

Yellowknife Bay, a 2-foot-deep basin, is an interesting spot for Mars scientists because the area contains terrain unlike any yet seen by the Curiosity rover. Mission scientists are studying rock targets in the region in order to pick one for Curiosity to drill inside.

Curiosity has been studying the region using its mast-mounted cameras and laser, but the ultimate goal is the first trial of the rover's percussive drill.

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The instrument is designed to drill inside a rock and collect the powdery rock sample from the interior so it can be analyzed by other onboard tools — something never-before attempted on Mars, NASA officials said. The drilling test is set for early in 2013.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity landed on Mars on Aug. 5 to begin exploring the Red Planet. The $2.5 billion rover's primary mission is to determine if its Gale crater landing site could have ever supported primitive microbial life.

Curiosity is currently driving toward a spot called Glenelg near the base of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile mountain that rises up from the center of its Gale crater landing site.

Follow Miriam Kramer on Twitter @mirikramer or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also onFacebook & Google+.

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Photos: Month in Space: April 2013

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  2. Horsehead of a different color

    The Horsehead Nebula takes on an eerie glow in an infrared image from the Hubble Space Telescope. This picture, released April 21, marks the 23rd anniversary of the famous observatory's launch in 1990 aboard the space shuttle Discovery. (NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team via EPA) Back to slideshow navigation
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  3. Tight quarters

    Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano (right), NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg (left) and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin get their picture taken inside a Soyuz capsule simulator during a training exercise at Russia's Star City complex outside Moscow on April 26. The three spacefliers are scheduled to head for the International Space Station in May. (Sergei Remezov / Reuters) Back to slideshow navigation

  4. Blazing sun

    This full-disk view of the sun was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on April 11, during the strongest solar flare yet seen in 2013. The colors reflect the intensity of emissions in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths. (NASA / SDO) Back to slideshow navigation
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  5. Evil eye

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  6. Russian rocket's red glare

    A Russian Soyuz rocket blasts away from its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 29, sending NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian crewmates Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin toward the International Space Station for their six-month orbital tour of duty. (Sergei Ilnitsky / EPA) Back to slideshow navigation

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    Children hold self-made rocket models during a show in front of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, Russia, on April 14. The gathering was part of the festivities surrounding Cosmonautics Day on April 12. The Russian holiday marks the anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's historic spaceflight in 1961 - an occasion marked in other countries as "Yuri's Night." (Alexander Demianchuk / Reuters) Back to slideshow navigation

  8. Strokes in the Sahara

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  9. Stars in the cloud

    This glittering picture shows X-ray emissions from young sunlike stars in the "wing" of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy associated with the larger Milky Way. The Small Magellanic Cloud lies about 180,000 light-years from Earth. In this April 4 picture, readings from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in purple; visible light seen by the Hubble Space Telescope is in red, green, and blue; and infrared readings from the Spitzer Space Telescope are indicated in red. (NASA via Reuters) Back to slideshow navigation
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  10. A blast on Mars

    This image from the high-resolution camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a relatively youthful crater with dark-rayed ejecta, plus a light-toned zone that extends beyond that ejecta. The picture was taken in 2009, but it was released along with other images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, on April 3, 2013. Watch a video about the crater (NASA/JPL/University Of Arizona) Back to slideshow navigation
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  13. Blue heaven

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  14. Ready for a rocket ride

    Launch crew members check NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy's spacesuit just before his March 28 launch to the International Space Station. Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin joined Cassidy in a Soyuz capsule for a quick six-hour ride to the station. (Ramil Sitdikov / Ria Novosti / EPA) Back to slideshow navigation
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    Comet ISON takes on a fuzzy glow in an April 10 image from the Hubble Space Telescope. This picture was taken when the comet was 394 million miles from Earth, but Comet ISON is expected to get much closer. Some skywatchers hope it will become bright enough to rank as the "Comet of the Century." (J.-Y. Li (PSI) / NASA / ESA) Back to slideshow navigation
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