Curiosity Rover Chemistry Lab Tastes Mars Soil

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has delivered the first Martian dirt sample to its onboard chemistry laboratory, testing out gear that forms the scientific heart of the $2.5 billion robot.

Curiosity's huge robotic arm dropped a pinch of Red Planet dirt into the rover's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, or SAM. SAM can detect organic compounds the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it and is thus key to Curiosity's mission, which seeks to determine if Mars has ever been capable of supporting microbial life.

SAM ingested its first soil sample on Nov. 9 at a sandy site the rover team has dubbed Rocknest. The instrument analyzed the dirt over the following two d…
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