Well folks, a little more than a month after landing on Mars, NASA's Curiosity rover is finally going to start doing some real science.
On Thursday, Sept. 20, the one-ton rover will extend is robotized arm and touch the rock shown below, the space agency announced in a press conference today.
The rock is about 10 inches tall and 16 inches tall. It's been named "Jake Matijevic" in honor of the surface operations systems chief engineer for the Mars Science Laboratory Project. Matijevic passed away in August.
An instrument called the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer will determine the rock's composition and a camera will snap close-up images.
