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Hi, I'm Joel Hurowitz, a scientist with the
surface sampling system team and this is your

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Curiosity rover report.

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This week the Curiosity science team released
its initial findings from its first ever drilled

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sample on Mars.

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This sample was collected from the “John
Klein” drill site, which is located about

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500 meters east of where we landed about 7
months ago.

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Curiosity obtained her first drill sample
and passed that sample on to her onboard analytical

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lab instruments, called CheMin and SAM.

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These powerful instruments tell us about what
minerals are present in these rocks and whether

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they contain the ingredients necessary to
sustain life as we know it.

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What the Curiosity team has found is incredibly
exciting.

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When we combine what we have learned from
our remote sensing and contact science instruments

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with the data that’s coming in from CheMin
and SAM, we get a picture of an ancient watery

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environment, which would have been habitable
had life been present in it.

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As an example, the information that we’re
getting from the CheMin instrument, tells

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us that the minerals that are present in this
lakebed sedimentary rock at John Klein are

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very different from just about anything we’ve
ever analyzed before on Mars.

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And they tell us that the John Klein rock
was deposited in a fresh water environment.

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This is an important contrast with other sedimentary
environments that we‘ve visited on Mars,

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like the Meridiani Planum landing site where
the Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, has

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been operating since 2004.

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At that site, the sedimentary rocks record
evidence of an environment that was only wet

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on a very intermittent basis, and when it
was, the waters that were there were highly

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acidic, very salty, and not favorable for
the survival of organic compounds.

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This is in direct contrast to the fresh water
environment we’re seeing here at the John

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Klein Site.

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The SAM instrument is telling us that these
rocks contained all of the ingredients necessary

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for a habitable environment.

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We found carbon, sulfur and oxygen, all present
and a number of other elements in states that

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life could have taken advantage of.

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All in all, these few tablespoons of powder
from a Martian rock have provided the Curiosity

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science team with an exciting new dataset
that tells us that Gale Crater, and perhaps

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all of Mars, contained habitable environments.

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This is an incredible success for the Curiosity
mission to Gale, and the science team is looking

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forward to digging deeper into Mars’ ancient
watery past in the weeks, months, and years

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ahead.