The Mars rover Curiosity is preparing to drill into a flat rock outcrop that is expected to yield fresh insight into the red planet's history.
The highly anticipated drilling has been billed as the most complex engineering task since the acrobatic landing inside a Martian crater last summer. Curiosity is on a quest to determine whether environmental conditions could have been favourable for microbes.
By boring into a rock and transferring the powder to the rover's onboard chemistry lab and other instruments, scientists should get a better handle on the region's mineral and chemical makeup.
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