* Laser zapper to be tested next week
* Rover to search for life-friendly habitats
* Scientists pick first target for science
CAPE CANAVERAL, Aug 17 (Reuters) - NASA on Friday unveiled
plans for its Mars rover Curiosity's first road trip, part of a
two-year quest to determine if the planet most like Earth could
ever have hosted microbial life, scientists said.
The one-ton nuclear-powered robotic science lab landed in a
large crater near Mars' equator on Aug. 6 to search for organic
materials and other chemistry considered key to life.
The rover's primary target is Mount Sharp, a mound of
layered rock three miles (5 km) high rising from the floor of
Gale Crater.
Before beginning the 4.3-mile (7-km) trek to the base of
Mount Sharp, a journey expected to take months, the six-wheeled
Curiosity will visit a relatively nearby site named "Glenelg,"
which caught scientists' interest because it includes three
types of terrain.
The name was selected from a list of about 100 rock
formations in northern Canada. Scientists realized Glenelg was a
palindrome -- a word that reads the same backward -- and
particularly suited as the name for Curiosity's first
destination since the rover will have to come back through the
site to head to Mount Sharp.
The road trip to Glenelg depends in part on how well
Curiosity cruises through the rest of its instrument checkout.
Early next week, the rover will test-fire its powerful laser to
pulverize a bit of bedrock uncovered by exhaust from Curiosity's
descent engine.
A small telescope will then analyze the vaporized material
to determine what minerals it contains.
The combined system, known as Chemistry & Camera, or
ChemCam, is designed to make about 14,000 measurements
throughout Curiosity's mission, said lead instrument scientist
Roger Wiens, with the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
"There's a high-power laser that briefly projects several
megawatts onto a pinhead-size spot on the surface of Mars,"
Wiens said. "It creates a plasma, or a little ball of flame or
spark."
The telescope, which can observe the flash from up to about
25 feet (7 meters) away, then splits the light into its
component wavelengths.
Scientists use that information to determine chemical
composition.
Travel to Glenelg, located about 1,600 feet (500 meters)
away from Curiosity's landing site, should take a month or
longer, depending on how many stops scientists decide to make
along the way.
"Probably we'll do a month worth of science there, maybe a
little bit more," lead mission scientist John Grotzinger told
reporters during a conference call on Friday. "Sometime toward
the end of the calendar year, roughly, I would guess then we
would turn our sights toward the trek to Mount Sharp."
(Editing by David Adams and Xavier Briand)