Flashes appear on a baseball-size Martian rock [dubbed Nova] in a series of images taken Saturday, July 12 by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the arm of NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover. The flashes occurred while the rover’s Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument fired multiple laser shots to investigate the rock’s composition… [More at link, including video]
The rock target Nova displayed an increasing concentration of aluminum as the series of laser shots from ChemCam penetrated through dust on the rock’s surface. This pattern is typical of many rocks examined with ChemCam… [More at link]