Two years ago on February 9, NASA's Curiosity Rover drilled its first hole on a dusty Martian crater.

Curiosity used its onboard drill to make a small hole some 2.5 inches deep when it first broke into the Martian surface at the Gale Crater. Its mission then was to determine if the crater once had an environment conducive to life.

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The data provided by Curiosity answers this question in the affirmative. The robot landed on the Gale Crater in August 2012.

Since then, Curiosity has moved forward drill hole by drill hole in its quest to learn more about the geology of Mars. It's now on the slopes of Mount Sharp inside the crater, its main objective. The coming months will see Curiosity climb this mountain and drill more holes as it goes along.

Curiosity got to Mount Sharp in September 2014, where it has once again resumed drilling small holes in search of answers to questions regarding water (and perhaps life) in Mars' past.

It took its first samples from the base of Mount Sharp, in a region named Confidence Hills. Five months later and Curiosity is now at Pahrump Hills, It recently probed a rock named Mojave 2 and drilled into it using a new, low-impact drilling technique.

Curiosity analyzes the fine particulates created from the many holes its drilled using two instruments: the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM). These instruments use a range of tools and spectrometers to measure everything, including water and oxygen levels.

The rover is expected to spend some time at Mojave 2 because particles protruding from the rocks are thought to be salt deposits, which could be the remnants of an evaporated lake. Initial analytics have produced interesting results.