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Over the weekend, NASA’s Curiosity rover spent its time flying a strange rock on Mars with a laser.
To clarify, Curiosity was not just killing time. This particular rock, Digital trends It was reportedly adorned with unusual colors for the area, and vaporizing it with a laser is one of the best tricks Curiosity has to figure out what it’s made of.
Practice objective
The laser is just one of Curiosity’s tools to analyze the chemical composition of an object. In the past, the rover has used them to make discoveries that suggest that Mars once hosted life. Findings from this particular rock are not yet available, but Digital trends reports that colors might suggest the presence of organic compounds.
But it won’t be until the next rover, Perseverance, appears with more sophisticated tools that NASA can push the search for signs of ancient microbes to the next level.
Scouting Ahead
As NASA prepares for its Perseverance launch, Curiosity continues on what NASA calls a “summer trip” to explore and study more regions of the planet that once harbored life.
“Curiosity was designed to go beyond Opportunity’s search for the history of water,” NASA researcher Abigail Fraeman said in a press release. “We are discovering an ancient world that offered life a fulcrum for longer than we think.”
READ MORE: Curiosity is investigating a strangely colored rock that it found on Mars[[[[Digital trends]
More about curiosity: NASA’s next Mars Rover will sport a rock vaporization laser
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