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"NASA\u2019s Mars rover Curiosity, dispatched to determine if the planet most like Earth in the solar system ever had the ingredients for microbial life, returns to work on Wednesday following a month-long hiatus due to the sun blocking radio communications with Earth.\nThe rover, which landed on Aug. 6, 2012, inside a giant impact basin, wasn't completely silenced by the communications blockage. Every day, it beeped a signal over its X-band radio, which was received on Earth.\n\u201CThat was good confirmation that everything was going as expected,\u201D mission manager Rick Welch, with NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told Discovery News.\nSEE ALSO: Curiosity, Interrupted: Sun Makes Mars Go Dark\n\nScientists also were able to retrieve some data from Curiosity\u2019s radiation monitors through the orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft, which had intermittent transmissions during the solar blockage.\nNow that Earth and Mars are again aligned for communications, the first order of business is to update the rover\u2019s software. After that, scientists want to resume analysis of an area called Yellowknife Bay, where Curiosity already met the main goal of its mission by finding the chemical ingredients for life.\nHitting paydirt in the first rock sample analysis however raises the stakes for the primary target of Curiosity\u2019s two-year mission, a three-mile-high mountain of what appears to be layered sediment rising from the floor of the Gale Crater landing site.\nScientists have yet to decide exactly when Curiosity will head over toward Mount Sharp. Much depends on what else the rover digs up in Yellowknife Bay, located in the opposite direction of Mount Sharp and within the rover\u2019s elliptically shaped landing zone.\nSEE ALSO: Curiosity Drills Hole Into Mars Rock\n\n\u201CWe just didn\u2019t stumble into this area. This was something that took a lot of planning,\u201D said Curiosity lead scientist John Grotzinger, with the California Institute of Technology.\n\u201CIn case something happened with the rover we needed to make sure we had science to do in that landing ellipse. What was serendipitous was landing in a past aqueous environment and finding sulfates and clays,\u201D Grotzinger told Discovery News.\nCuriosity\u2019s first rock drill sample contained six elements needed for microbial life \u2014 hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus \u2014 plus water that had not been not too acidic or too salty.\nAdditional analysis is planned to look for carbon from a different and possibly organic source. The first sample\u2019s carbon was bound in carbon dioxide, which can be a source of energy for rock-eating microbes.\nScientists expect the search for organic carbon will be difficult. Even if it exists, there may not be enough of it to be detected. It also could have been chemically altered over time, or broken down by cosmic and solar radiation.\n\u201CThe hope is we find some other examples of habitable environments. There are a bunch of different geological reasons why there could be more of less carbon in one place,\u201D Grotzinger said.\nSEE ALSO: Two Mars Rovers Search for Clues to Life\n\nYellowknife Bay is in a lowlands which, at some point in the past, was covered by water. Scientists, however, have no means to determine what happened before or after. In comparison, Mount Sharp offers scientists a sequence in time, with the record of older events preserved at the bottom of the mound and more recent alterations of rock rising above.\n\u201CSay we find something that looks like another attractive ancient potentially habitable environment and it\u2019s 200 meters above the base of Mount Sharp. We can go up there and then from there we can go not just upward but also downward again. So if you\u2019re looking for something, you can explore in both directions of time\u2019s arrow,\u201D Grotzinger said.\n\u201CRight now, (in Yellowknife Bay) we\u2019re in the good stuff, but unfortunately, we can\u2019t go downhill anymore. We\u2019re there. That\u2019s all Yellowknife Bay is going to give us,\u201D he said.\nScientists plan to drill into at least one more rock to look for carbon and to verify the results of the first sample analysis.\n\u201CYellowknife Bay still has some information to give us and it\u2019s definitely worth one more drill target,\u201D Welch said. \u201CBut from my point of view, if Yellowknife Bay is such a rich area, there probably are many other rich areas within Gale Crater and a lot of things to be discovered.\u201D\nImage courtesy of NASA"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/05/01/curiosity-mars-mountaineering/>