Preparing to drill its first hole into a Martian rock, NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover tested its own strength by hammering a rock this weekend that may have once been under running water.

NASA outfitted Curiosity with its biggest drill yet, which actually only drills down 1 inch. The drill is an important part of the mission, so Curiosity must first test the tools to make sure they’re performing as expected in the Mars environment. The “pounding” seems successful, as NASA is moving forward with its drill plans.

Curiosity’s main mission is to discover anything that might support the idea that life can exist on Mars. The rover is stationed in an area that “shows many signs of past exposure to liquid water, including light-colored mineral veins that were apparently deposited by flower water long ago,” according to a blog post from NASA.

NASA also pointed out a tweet from Bobak Ferdowski (or as you may know him, that guy with the mohawk from the Jet Propulsion Lab) that read, “We tapped this rock on Mars with our drill. Keep it classy everyone.”

We caught up with Ferdowki and had the pleasure of interviewing him on camera at the 2012 Crunchies. He accepted the award for Best Technology Achievement, since Curiosity seems be a bit tied up at the moment. Ferdowski surprised us all when he said Curiosity is actually a lady! That is, NASA considers all of its rovers to be female.

Check the video for more insight on the Curiosity program. We have to apologize for the audio, though! It has some static-y parts:

Mars rock image via NASA

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Ever wanted to explore Mars just like you can explore Earth on Google Maps? Now you can, thanks to an incredible new 360-degree panorama on 360Cities.

Photographer Andrew Bodrov has created a way to explore the Mars surface by stitching together photos from the Mars Curiosity rover. While the rover’s camera isn’t top-notch by today’s standards, it still does a great job showing us the surface of the Red Planet, especially rocky soil and the Marian horizon.

The explorable image lets you zoom, pan, and easily navigate the landscape. It’s the closet thing we have yet to feeling like we’re actually on Mars.

Click here to explore Mars’ surface in 360 degrees.

You can view more photos from Curosity at NASA.gov or in the gallery below:

Photo: 360Cities.com

We’re not going to apologize for this: When President Obama muses about getting his own mohawk inspired by Bobak Ferdowsi of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), you’re going to get another post about the landing on Mars.

“I understand there’s a special mohawk guy who’s working on the mission?” said President Obama in his call to JPL, “You know, I, in the past, have thought about getting a mohawk myself. My team keeps on discouraging me. Now that he’s received marriage proposals and thousands of Twitter followers, I’m going to go back to my team and see if it makes sense.”

Last week, JPL successfully landed a rover on Mars called Curiosity. Right after the landing, memes about Ferdowsi’s head spread across the Internet. You can’t blame Obama for wanting a little bit of that action in an election year. Mashable notes one Twitter user, @Darth, already created a Mohawk meme for the POTUS himself, which you can see above.

This was Obama’s second congratulations to the JPL team, after issuing a statement the day of landing. The President expects this mission is a precursor to an “even more audacious undertaking,” otherwise known as sending a human to Mars. He also thanked a number of countries — including Spain, Russian, Germany, France, Canada, Italy, Japan, and Australia — that helped the U.S. send Curiosity to Mars.

“If, in fact, you do make contact with Martians, please let me know right away,” Obama concluded. “Because I’ve got a lot of other things on my plate, but I suspect that that will go to the top of the list!”

Check out the video of JPL on the call with the President:

Image via @Darth/Twitter