On May 20 Curiosity has successfully drilled a rock after about two years due to a malfunction in the drilling tool.
The first color photo taken the day after drilling (see https://www.facebook.com/PianetaMarte.MdM/photos/a.1625578140858706.1073741828.1612043482212172/1709795545770298/ ) raised some doubts about the possible “wet” appearance of the material extracted during drilling.
Although the material extracted from a rock is unlikely to be wet, the fact that it was left “outdoors” for an entire night may have exposed it to the formation of liquid water condensation (see https://phys.org/news/2015-04-mars-liquid-curiosity-rover-brine.html ).
Since no one will be able to deny or confirm the thing, given the lack of specific analysis, I decided to mount in sequence the various images available today taken by Chemcam to show the changes over four days.
Inside the hole itself, you can see the arrival of small black holes arranged in horizontal rows due to the laser for spectroscopic analysis. You can also see that the use of the laser causes small bursts, probably responsible for the fall of part of the excavated material more unstable.
However, it should be noted that most of the extracted material remained stable and compact!!!
Did it really get wet?
HD animated GIF: https://image.ibb.co/ccdVLo/Chemcam_Sol2057_2059_2061_Date.gif
Individual original images:
Sol 2057, 20/05/2018 17:27:43 UTC https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?rawid=CR0_580107412PRC_F0701752CCAM05056L2&s=2057
Sol 2059, 22/05/2018 16:42:57 UTC https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?rawid=CR0_580277524PRC_F0701752CCAM03059L1&s=2059
Sol 2061, 24/05/2018 17:05:35 UTC https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?rawid=CR0_580451681PRC_F0701752CCAM01061L1&s=2061
Sol 2061, 24/05/2018 17:17:33 UTC https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?rawid=CR0_580452399PRC_F0701752CCAM01061L1&s=2061
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