Speculations addressed. Curiosity drills for the truth.

This image shows where NASA's Curiosity rover aimed two different instruments to study a rock known as “Jake Matijevic”.

Rumors about the Martian Curiosity rover have been all over the media. They began appearing earlier this month, after an NPR story quoted Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger as saying that the rover's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument had recently gathered data "for the history books."

SAM is capable of identifying organic compounds, the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it. That is the reason why so many people assumed that Curiosity had detected biological traces in the Martian soil. As expected, officials have held the speculations to be untrue and scheduled a conference on Monday (12/03/12) to address this and any other questions.

It is known for a fact that Curiosity is planning on drilling a Martian rock in the search for past life. How can a simple stone provide such information? Carbon compounds adhere to the rock thought time. This process makes the rock similar to a time capsule with the information of billions of years ago. In earth, fossil stones are the most effective tools on tracing ancestors.

The process is not an easy task when is not known how the soil was formed or from where did it came from. Curiosity with its powerful drill and on board science can clearly read all of this information. Until now, the robot has only analyzed the rocks from the outside and has never used the drill.

The first Martian rock NASA's Curiosity rover reached out to touch presents a more varied composition than expected from previous missions. The rock also resembles some unusual rocks from Earth's interior.

The rover team used two instruments on Curiosity to study the chemical makeup of the football-size rock called "Jake Matijevic" The results support some surprising recent measurements and provide an example of why identifying rocks' composition is such a major emphasis of the mission. Rock compositions tell stories about unseen environments and planetary processes.

On Earth, rocks with composition like the Jake Rock, typically come from processes in Earth’s interior core. During a two-year prime mission, researchers will use Curiosity's 10 instruments to assess whether the study area ever has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity drove 83 feet eastward during the 102nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Nov. 18, 2012), and used its left navigation camera to record this view ahead at the end of the drive.

Biology group. Irene Vargas, Rafael Gutierrez, and Nizida Granado.