United space in Europe
Rocknest3 relayed by Mars Express
Enabling & Support

Rocknest 3

27/11/2012 1309 views 7 likes 283026 ID
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This was taken on Sol 57 (4 October 2012) of target Rocknest3 using the ChemCam Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) on the NASA Curiosity rover at a distance of 3.7 m. The image was downlinked to Earth by ESA's Mars Express orbiter via the 35m deep space ESTRACK station in New Norcia, Australia.

This image was taken after a series of five ChemCam Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectrometer (LIBS) observations. Rocknest is the name of the area where Curiosity stopped for a month to perform its first mobile laboratory analyses on soil scooped from a small sand dune. Rocknest3 was a convenient nearby target of which ChemCam made more than thirty observations overall consisting of 1,500 laser shots; it was also interrogated by the arm-mounted Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) instrument.

  • NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP
  • Operations
  • Mars Express
  • ESTRACK
Rocknest3 relayed by Mars Express
Enabling & Support

Rocknest 3

Image 770 views 5 likes
Mosaic: ChemCam laser targets on Rocknest3
Enabling & Support

Mosaic: ChemCam laser targets on Rocknest3

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Rocknest3
Enabling & Support

Rocknest3 MCAM100 with RMI FOV indicated

Image 1417 views 3 likes
Colour image of Rockenest3, about as big as a shoebox
Agency

Colour image of Rockenest3, about as big as a shoebox

Image 2325 views 6 likes
Martian soil
Science & Exploration

Martian soil

Image 1350 views 9 likes