May 17, 2014 10:24 AM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

NASA's Curiosity rover has officially moved on from the "Windjana" site after completing its drilling mission and is now back en route to Mount Sharp.

According to a press release from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Curiosity mission managers have decided not to drill any other rocks in the area and will resume the drive to Mount Sharp soon. "Windjana" was a slab of sandstone Curiosity drilled into last week and from which it collected samples.

The last two targets Curiosity drilled into were mudstones and both revealed evidence of water existing on the Red Planet at one point. Combined with all of Curiosity's work over the past year, NASA scientists have determined it is highly likely Mars once hosted microbial life.

However, Mars' atmosphere deteriorated and all water or life forms would have dried up. NASA launched the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) this past Nov. to find out the history of the Red Planet's atmosphere. The space agency hopes to learn why the atmosphere disappeared over the course of the past billions of years.

"By combining (Solar Wind Ion Analyzer, or SWIA) measurements with measurements of escaping gases we can parameterize the loss of atmospheric gases from Mars as a function of solar wind conditions," Halekas said in a NASA press release. "Ultimately, we want to know where the atmosphere, especially water, went, how it left, and what Mars has looked like over its entire history."

MAVEN left Earth six months ago and is on schedule to arrive above Mars in late Sept. this year.

"No matter how much testing we perform in advance, and we do a staggering amount, there are inevitably things that we just can't plan for or simulate in a lab," Halekas said. "I anticipate that the first few weeks after SWIA is turned on in flight and the first few weeks after arrival at Mars will therefore be especially exciting and challenging, as we learn how to best operate the instrument in the Martian environment."

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