Curiosity is firing its vaporizing laser today [View all]

[Ichingcarpenter]

Curiosity is firing its vaporizing laser on mars for the first time today. Will this be seen as an act of war against the martians?







NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is slated to fire its rock-vaporizing laser for the first time this weekend, shortly before the 1-ton robot's maiden drive on the Red Planet.

Scientists plan to blast a Martian rock called N165 with Curiosity's laser, which is part of the rover's remote-sampling ChemCam instrument. The 3-inch-wide (7.6 centimeters) stone sits just 9 feet (2.7 meters) from Curiosity, well within ChemCam's 25-foot (7.6 m) range, scientists said.

"Our team has waited eight long years to get to this date, and we're happy that everything is looking good so far," ChemCam principal investigator Roger Wiens, of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, told reporters today (Aug. 17). "Hopefully we'll be back early next week and be able to talk about how Curiosity's first laser shots went."


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Photo of the helpless martian, itss almost dead center and looks like a pyramid.

http://www.livescience.com/22507-mars-rover-curiosity-laser-big-drive.html