If SAM does spy a potential organic, it will aim to determine if it's actually from Mars, or hitchhiking strays from Earth contaminating the sample collector.
At the same time it was activated in space, a control sample was activated here on Earth.
Such depths are commonplace when sample cores are drilled out of the earth's crust by geologists.
"This is going to be the largest sample of an extraterrestrial object returned to Earth since end of the Apollo missions over 40 years ago, " said Edward Beshore, deputy principal investigator for the mission, who is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
The image has been white-balanced to show what the sample would look like if it were on Earth.
"This is the first time any robot has drilled in any rock on Mars" or anywhere else beyond Earth, said Louise Jandura, chief engineer for Curiosity's sample system at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
So, its of no surprise, when looking at long term ice core sample and ocean core deposits, they indicate as the Earth warms, so does the carbon footprint from the increase carbon produced high in the atmosphere.
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Three days later when the first men to reach another world arrived, their initial act, within moments of setting foot there, was to document and collect a precious sample of lunar dust, to share with laboratories across the Earth.
OSIRIS-REx will visit an asteroid called 1999 RQ36, take a sample of at least 2.1 ounces and bring it back to Earth.
Kepler is searching for Earth-like planets around far-flung stars, and the Mars Science Laboratory will sample the Red Planet's geology looking for the building blocks of life - though it will not explicitly look for life itself.
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