NASA's Curiosity Moves in on Planned Waypoint

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has nearly reached its first site of close-up study since it began its long journey to Mount Sharp two months ago.

Currently positioned on the crest of a rise known as Panorama Point, the rover is engaged in photographing the pale outcrop selected as a site of further examination based on images taken by the agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Five such waypoints are laid out on the rover's route from the area "Glenelg" where it spent the first half of 2013 and the entry point to the lower layers of Mount Sharp. This first stop is located roughly one-fifth along the 5.3 mile route.

For Curiosity, the moving is generally slow, with the longest one-day drive in its 13 months exploring the Red planet registering 464 feet.

According to Jeff Biesiadecki, a rover planner on the Curiosity team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the reason he and his colleagues were able to extend the rover so far during that day was by enabling the rover's hazard avoidance system, allowing the rover to drive well beyond what scientists on the ground could actually see.

Despite its busy schedule, Curiosity has already accomplished its major science goal: uncovering evidence of an ancient environment that could have hosted microbial life. This discovery came from an analysis of rock powder drilled from two outcrops in an area called Yellowknife Bay. Still, the researchers have high hopes for the rover as it continues its slow trek toward Mount Sharp where it will examine multiple rock layers in order to gain a clearer picture of the changes in the planet's environment through the years.

"We want to know how the rocks at Yellowknife Bay are related to what we'll see at Mount Sharp," said the mission's project scientist, John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology. "That's what we intend to get from the waypoints between them. We'll use them to stitch together a timeline -- which layers are older, which are younger."