Curiosity got the better of itself.
The $2.5 billion roving laboratory has finally reached its target waypoint called "The Kimberley," which scientists deem as a hotbed of a diverse range of rocks, and will now resume with its third drilling since it arrival on Mars over a year ago.
Last April 26, Curiosity came across a likely drilling area, posting an image of the site on its Twitter account.
"To drill or not to drill? Investigating my next potential drilling target on Mars," it tweeted.
Curiosity need not to wait for an answer because scientists back at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory gave it a go signal, eventually sending Wednesday images of the slab of stone, currently known as "Windjana," named after a gorge in Western Australia.
A portion of it was already cleared from dust, and it took Curiosity quite a handful of tools such as the wire-bristled Dust Removal Tool to examine the promising spot over the weekend.
"In the brushed spot, we can see that the rock is fine-grained, its true color is much grayer than the surface dust, and some portions of the rock are harder than others, creating the interesting bumpy textures," said Melissa Rice, a Curiosity science team member of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California. "All of these traits reinforce our interest in drilling here in order [to] understand the chemistry of the fluids that bound these grains together to form the rock."
After Curiosity drills the powdered sample needed for analysis, a laboratory on board analyzes the samples and sends the data back home. The entire data gathering process usually takes weeks or months.
On its way to reach its ultimate goal that is the foothills of Mt. Sharp, the highest peak in the 96 mile-wide Gale Crater, Curiosity has made two major "stop-overs" to search for evidence of life in the first two Martian rocks unearthed early last year.
The two fine-grained rocks a stone-throw away from each other in Yellowknife Bay 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) northeast of the rover's current position bared substantial data of an ancient lakebed environment that contained chief chemical elements needed to sustain life. They are named "John Klein" and "Cumberland."
However, before Curiosity lays its robotic drilling arms on Windjana, it has to undergo an initial drilling process to check on its readiness, NASA said.
