NASA’s Curiosity rover analyzed its first scoop on Mars and found water molecules in “higher than anticipated” quantities, according to an announcement from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory today.

The water found attached to sand or other particles is “not unusual,” according to JPL, but the quantities are surprising as the team looks for organic compounds in Martian soil.

Currently, the Mars rover is stationed at “Rocknest,” which the JPL team choose for its dusty conditions. They researchers felt that Curiosity could use the dirt here to clean out its arm, which scoops up material and delivers it to analysis tools inside its body. The arm needed to be cleaned of any Earth materials that could get mixed in with the Martian samples.

This was the first time Curiosity has used all of its instruments in analyzing the regolith, or Martian soil. This included its Sample Analysis at Mars tool (SAM), the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin), and others. Indeed, it cooked some of the dirt in a tiny oven inside its body.

The regolith here revealed volcanic-like properties similar to Hawaii as well as glass particles. Some of the dirt further revealed carbon-based chlorine and oxygen compound called perchlorate. This was first discovered by NASA’s Pheonix Lander. “One-carbon organics” were also created when dirt was heated inside the tiny oven, meaning that we could be one-step closer to understanding how life could form on Mars. We’re still a long way off, however, because NASA says the chemical reactions that formed the carbon may have been the product of an Earthly object mixing in with the regolith.

After Curiosity is done analyzing the martian dirty here, it will head off toward its ultimate destination Mount Sharp. Its mission is to determine whether or not the Gale Crater ever had the environment that could have sustained microorganisms.

Curiosity scoops image via JPL

Thanks to NASA’s Curiosity rover, scientists have been able to track wind and radiation patterns on Mars in an attempt to discover whether conditions there were ever favorable to life.

Initial readings found that levels of radiation are about the same as those astronauts typically experience in the low-Earth orbit. “Absolutely, astronauts can live in this environment,” Don Hassler of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., said during a news conference Thursday.

Hassler explained that Mars’ natural environment acts as a shield for the radiation on the surface. This supports the notion that astronauts can set foot and even function on the Red Planet for a short stretches of time.

Curiosity’s fancy instrument, the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD), monitors high-energy radiation in the environment; this could also be a factor in determining whether Mars has the potential to host lifeforms.

Researchers believe that Mars lost its global magnetic field long ago due to solar wind bombardment. RAD reported that as the remaining Martian atmosphere thickens and thins daily, radiation levels rise and fall by 3 percent to 5 percent.

As was first reported in a NASA blog post, researchers stationed in a car-sized mobile lab are specifically tracking events with a least one characteristic of a whirlwind. They are also linking the rhythmic changes in radiation to daily atmospheric changes, which will lead to a better understanding the native environment.

The overarching goal of the mission is to use assess whether areas inside Gale Crater, an area of Mars where Curiosity landed, once offered a habitable environment for microbes.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory prepared for a lot of variables when it sent Curiosity, the car sized rover, to Mars, but it didn’t prepare for it to become a tween-aged girl on Myspace.

Just kidding. The Mars Curiosity rover took a “selfie,” or a picture you take of yourself from a flattering angle. Curiosity was actually taking its own portrait for researchers down on Earth to use as an example of how the rover looked at the beginning of its mission. It will periodically send these images, which researchers at JPL will use to see if Curiosity’s wheels are clogged with dirt, or if it has any other kind of damage.

Right now the rover seems to be in pretty good shape, though these images are only thumbnails stitched together to give us the full view of Curiosity. It will later send a high-definition version of the selfie that the researchers can use for examination.

Curiosity previously took high-def images of a shiny material found in the martian soil. This particular shiny piece was actually just plastic, but Curiosity’s cameras later helped researchers determine that there were separate, native shiny-particles in the regolith, or Mars dirt. Curiosity took up a few more scoops to do some research and found that Mars’ soil is similar to the volcanic soil in Hawaii.

You can see the scoop marks on the left side of the image.

hat tip Gizmodo; Curiosity image via JPL

Shiny objects found on the surface of Mars may, in fact, be native to the planet. Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory team sent commands to the Mars Curiosity Rover today to pick up a bit of the reflective stuff and, if all goes well, perform its first analysis of the landscape since landing.

JPL says it will send commands to Curiosity today and will later analyze the scoop using “one of the Rover’s internal analytical instruments, the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument.” It will be further analyzed by a tool called the SAM, or Sample Analysis at Mars instrument.

After taking high-resolution images of the first “shiny object,” the JPL team decided it was likely a piece of plastic or wire either from the Rover or from the craft that carried the Rover to Mars. However, after Curiosity picked up its second scoop, the team saw other pieces of reflective material within the clumps of Martian dirt.

This scoopful was discarded when the team saw more of the shiny material in the hole left by Curiosity’s scoop. The team didn’t want to introduce foreign particles to Curiosity’s internal analysis tools, but after reevaluating, JPL believes this could be a natural part of the Mars landscape.

Last week, Curiosity grabbed its first scoop and took video while it vibrated the regolith, or Martian dirt, to get rid of excess material. It later used the sample to clean the analysis tools and make sure no other debris was sitting in the Rover’s tubes.

Mars debris image via Nasa

The Mars Curiosity rover isn’t just a bad-ass robot scientist roaming the badlands of Mars. It’s also a jukebox. The rover transmitted Black Eyed Peas singer Will.I.Am’s latest song, “Reach for the Stars.” Tacky? Maybe. But it’s a song from Mars.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory radioed the song using Curiosity today over the 150 million miles between our planets. It was good publicity for everyone involved: Will.I.Am got to stand behind the idea that if you dream it, you can do it; and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory got a second boost of “coolness.” What was the first boost? Obviously its mohawk-ed employee, which inspired Obama to to consider changing his own do.

The New York Times notes that the Curiosity rover sadly does not have speakers to play the song on the red planet, though the audio wouldn’t come out the same in Mars’ atmosphere anyway.

JPL isn’t foreign to celebrities either. The lab invited a number of stars, from movie actors like Morgan Freeman to singers like Will.I.Am himself, to watch the “seven minutes of terror”: the decent the Curiosity rover made to Mars and the 7 minutes it took the rover to transmit its landing to JPL.

Check out a video of the song here:

via The New York Times; Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech