WASHINGTON: NASA's Mars rover, Curiosity, is parked at a sandpit and ready to scoop up soil to clean and test its geological sampling hardware, NASA says.

These will be the first solid samples put through Curiosity's collection and processing tool set - a task central to determining whether Mars ever harboured life, NASA officials said.

This image provided by NASA shows shows a Martian rock outcrop near the landing site of the rover Curiosity thought to be the site of an ancient streambed, next to similar rocks shown on earth. Credit:AP/NASA

Project team members said they were excited to get started, but planned to proceed with caution. ''Because this is such an important capability, kind of the keystone of the rover mission, we're being deliberately, incredibly careful,'' said the lead systems engineer, Daniel Limonadi.

Step one will be to use sand to scrape off the earth-born film that would taint any future testing.