(Image source: NASA )

 

BY HARUMENDHAH HELMY
ANCHOR CHRISTINA HARTMAN
 

Look out, inanimate objects on Mars. An Earth-made robot is out to get you with its laser beam! The Mars Curiosity rover just zapped an innocent, fist-sized Martian rock.
 

This unsuspecting rock was the target practice to check out how the laser on Curiosity’s Chemistry and Camera — ChemCam — works. (Photo courtesy of NASA .)
 

Turns out — it works pretty well. This picture shows how Curiosity made that tiny hole on the rock. (Photo courtesy of NASA .)
 

On Twitter , the little-rover-that-could promises it’s actually not “ill-tempered” and that it simply “ zapped a rock for science.” And as if it could not get any cuter, the rover signed off with a #pewpew .
 

Props to that social media team. And also — props to the ChemCam team. Though today’s zaps were meant to just test the laser, scientists say they can probably start studying the data it gathered.
 

CNet explains how it works ... “ The laser pulses ... turn some of the rock’s atoms into a glowing, ionized plasma.” The ChemCam can then analyze the plasma to study the rock’s elements. “ Scientists plan to look for possible changes indicating differences between dust on the surface of the rock and its interior.”
 

In a NASA press release , one of the scientists on the project says the data the laser collected are even better than they ever had during tests on earth! He says... “It's so rich, we can expect great science from investigating what might be thousands of targets with ChemCam in the next two years."
 

ChemCam’s lucky rock victim — which NASA has dubbed ‘Coronation’ — is now the first rock on an extraterrestrial planet to receive an Earthling laser interrogation. (Photo from NASA .)
 

The ChemCam is only one of seventeen cameras on Curiosity. It was jointly built by the U.S. Department of Energy and the French national space agency. SOC