Mars rover in Yellowknife Bay for the holidays

The NASA Mars rover Curiosity will be spending the Christmas holidays in a shallow depressionthat's been named Yellowknife Bay.

The rover reached the lip of a half-metre descent into Yellowknife Bay on Dec. 11. Since then the rover has been providing information to help researchers choose a rock to drill. Collecting a sample from within a rock has never been attempted before on Mars.

In August, NASA scientists said the spot on Mars where the Curiosity rover landedhad been named Yellowknife, after the capital of the Northwest Territories, because of the citys link to the exploration of North America's oldest rocks.

The city is located on the shore of Yellowknife Bay onGreat Slave Lake.

Curiositys two-year mission is to assess whether areas inside the planets Gale Crater ever offered a habitable environment for microbes.