At the center of this image from NASA’s Curiosity rover is a hole in a rock called 'Mammoth Lakes’ where the rover conducted its latest sample drilling on Mars. The drilling took place on June 19, 2024 (Sol 4219) of the rover’s mission in Gale crater. Several preparatory activities with the drill preceded this operation, including a preload test on the stability of the target and the rover. The image was obtained by Curiosity’s right-side mast camera on the same sol. The sample-collection hole is 0.63 inches (1.6 centimeters) in diameter, its official depth is not known at this time, but the size of the tailings (powdered rock) that surround the hole suggests the depth could be sufficiently deep enough to provide enough sample to feed into the rover’s on-board instruments for detailed analysis. On the left of the hole is a bright patch where the rover had previously brushed the surface to remove the dust in order to collect data using the rover’s alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS). The APXS is spectrometer mounted on the turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm, and analyses the chemical element composition of a sample from scattered alpha particles.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS