What was the name of the first rock drilled by the Curiosity rover?

John Klein was the first rock drilled by the Curiosity rover. Curiosity drilled the target on February 8, 2013, during its 182nd sol on Mars, while exploring the Yellowknife Bay area inside Gale Crater.

The drilling produced a powder sample that Curiosity delivered to its onboard CheMin and SAM laboratories. The rock was named for John Klein, a former NASA Mars Science Laboratory deputy project manager who died in 2011. Its composition provided evidence that ancient Gale Crater once offered a freshwater environment with chemical conditions suitable for microbial life.

Curiosity’s drill created a hole about 1.6 centimeters wide and 6.4 centimeters deep. A smaller preparatory “mini drill” test had been performed nearby, but John Klein was the first target from which Curiosity collected and analyzed a drilled rock sample.

Rocknest is a common alternative in quiz answers, but it was a soil-and-sand sampling site, not the first drilled rock. Cumberland was another important drilled rock at Yellowknife Bay, sampled later in 2013.