Click on the image for the animation

This video, presented at four times actual speed, shows a test using an engineering model of the soil scoop for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity. The scoop dips to about 1.4 inches (3.5 centimeters) deep. This test took place at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., in 2011.

Curiosity's scoop will collect soil samples to be sieved, processed and delivered to analytical instruments inside the rover.

JPL manages the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more about NASA's Curiosity mission, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl, http://www.nasa.gov/mars, and http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.