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Curiosity rover warms up its laser with basaltic rock blast
Intrepid 6-wheeler Curiosity perhaps protested too much when it tweeted "Yes, I've got a laser beam attached to my head. I'm not ill tempered; I zapped a rock for science." NASA turned the rover's high-powered laser loose with 30 pulses of a million watts each, reducing a thin layer of the chosen stone, dubbed N165 "Coronation," to plasma. The resulting spectrum was then analyzed by the on-board "ChemCam" to determine its composition, and the US/French team who developed the system said it's working even better on Mars than it did on terra firma. The results are now being studied, but if we had a laser beam on another planet, we'd be firing it all over the place -- in the name of "science," of course.
Filed under: Science
Curiosity rover warms up its laser with basaltic rock blast originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Aug 2012 11:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | ||CommentsOriginal Link: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/20/curiosity-rover-tests-laser/
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