The Curiosity Rover has clocked up another first for humanity by examining an alien sand dune.

The nuclear-powered space tank is currently at a spot named "Bagnold Dunes," which can be found on the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp inside the Gale Crater that's been Curiosity's home since it arrived on August 6th, 2012.

NASA says the Bagnolds are up to “two storeys” high and are known to move by up to a metre each year.

The image at the top of the story is deceptive because the dunes depicted there (here for readers on mobile devices appear rather pale. The dune Curiosity is investigating, named “High Dune”, is rather darker as this image hosted by NASA shows (external image so this page doesn't take ages to load).

Curiosity's wheels will help it to scrape sand off the top of dunes, the better to investigate what lies beneath. One image released by NASA suggests it's sand all the way down.

NASA also hopes to scoop some sand into the rover's super-sensitive-space-sieve. Once that's done, the robot explorer's various instruments will subject it to all manner of analyses in order to figure out what they're made of. ®