Curiosity's Progress

From the BBC:
....The rover will now employ its Dan instrument, which fires the subatomic particles neutrons at the surface to examine levels of hydrogen- and hydroxyl-containing minerals that could hint at Mars' prior water-rich history.

Another tool in its arsenal, the ChemCam, which uses a laser to vapourise rock and then chemically examine the vapour, will also have a look at the scour marks.

And the Sample Analysis at Mars or Sam instrument, itself a package of three analysis tools, has now been switched on and is being run through its paces ahead of "sniffing" the Martian atmosphere; the tests include analysing a sample of Earth air that was left in it at launch.

But what has caught the interest of Nasa engineers already is what is called an "unconformity" spotted in the rover's first images of Mount Sharp.

The term refers to an evidently missing piece in the geological record, where one layer of sediment does not geologically neatly line up with that above it............