Curiosity Blog: Success! Drill Sample Collected

Written by Abigail Fraeman, Deputy Project Scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

Earth planning date: Friday, May 22, 2026

I spent this past weekend eagerly awaiting the downlink from Mars that would show us the results of Curiosity's drill attempt at "Campo Marte." A few weeks ago, when Curiosity drilled the "Atacama" block, it had been quite the surprise to see the post-drill images arrive on Earth that showed the rover picking up the entire Atacama block along with the drill. After freeing ourselves from this pesky passenger, the team carefully assessed all the telemetry and imaging data we had collected to understand why the entanglement happened and to mitigate the chance of it happening again. We concluded it would be ok to try another drill in this general area, and nearby Campo Marte looked like a great target because it had all the right geologic features and was significantly bigger than Atacama. What a delight it was to see images, like the Mastcam shown above, streaming down on Saturday that showed Curiosity had successfully retracted its drill from the rock and collected some sample to analyze this time around!

On Monday, the team looked at the pinches of drilled rock powder, or portions, that we had dropped as a test onto part of Curiosity, an element of our standard post-drilling activities. You can also take a look at what we saw - here's a picture of the rover before we did anything, and here's what we saw after we delivered the first portion, and then the second portion. Can you make out the little bit of powder that appears between the sample deliveries? This test is important to make sure we'll provide good samples to the analytical instruments inside our chassis, CheMin and SAM. Beyond their science operations value, I also love seeing these images because they remind me how powerful our laboratory instruments are. With just a little pinch of powder, no more than tens of milligrams, these laboratories can reveal incredibly detailed information about the composition of Martian rocks and give us huge new insights into the planet's past climate and habitability.