For those of you who are impatient to get on the road toward Mount Sharp, you're going to have to wait a while longer, because Curiosity is not done at John Klein. Today's briefing was full of engineering results, but there's a lot of science to be done on these rocks yet. Curiosity has sample in her scoop, but she has to sieve and portion and deliver it to her analytical instruments SAM and Chemin, activities that will likely take a few more days. And then there will still be more work to do to characterize the site. There could well be more drilling, sieving, and analyzing to come. John Grotzinger repeated at today's briefing something he said at the American Geophysical Union meeting last fall: that these rocks are exactly the kind of thing that Curiosity went to Mars to study, so they're in no hurry to depart.

One thing that was mentioned at the briefing is that they are being cautious to avoid a causing a potentially serious problem within CHIMRA, the set of devices on the turret that collects, sieves, and portions rock powder. Dan Limonadi explained at the briefing that three identical units were built; two have been in use on Earth for testing, and one is on Mars. One of the Earth units developed a problem about halfway through its design lifetime involving the 150-micrometer sieve, the one that separates out powder fine enough to be dropped into Chemin. It was first noticed late last year (some time between the DPS and AGU meetings). "Edge welds" that hold the sieve to its chamber are popping apart, which creates a gap that could allow particles larger than 150 micrometers to pass by the sieve. The same problem has not been observed on the other Earth test unit (which is the one that is installed on the Earth testbed copy of the rover), and they are now watching for it but have not seen it on Mars. The unit that had the popping edge welds survived through its complete design lifetime and the was able to perform its function well throughout the test period. After that, it was pulled apart and subjected to intense study.