NASA Curiosity Rover Drills its First Hole at Mount Sharp (PHOTO)

NASA's Curiosity rover has reached the ultimate destination in its science mission on Mars and has officially broken the ground at Mount Sharp.

According to Space.com, Curiosity drilled about 2.6 into the base of the mountain in the middle of the Gale Crater, the rover's landing spot. The one-ton rover collected pieces of powdered rock for future analysis.

Curiosity has been on a track to reach Mount Sharp, which stands about 3.4 miles high, since landing on the Red Planet in Aug. 2012.

"This drilling target is at the lowest part of the base layer of the mountain, and from here we plan to examine the higher, younger layers exposed in the nearby hills," Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said in a press release. "This first look at rocks we believe to underlie Mount Sharp is exciting because it will begin to form a picture of the environment at the time the mountain formed, and what led to its growth."