NASA believed it has found a new drilling site for its Curiosity rover and the machine is examining a specific "sandstone slab" for a potential target.

According to a press release from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the sandstone sample would be the third drilled rock and the first one not to be a mudstone. Named after a gorge in Western Australia, Curiosity mission managers called the sample "Windjana."

"The planned inspection, designed to aid a decision on whether to drill at Windjana, includes observations with the camera and X-ray spectrometer at the end of the rover's arm, use of a brush to remove dust from a patch on the rock, and readings of composition at various points on the rock with an instrument that fires laser shots from the rover's mast," NASA said in the release.

Curiosity's ultimate science goal from day one has been to reach Mount Sharp. In Aug. 2012, NASA successfully performed a soft landing placing the rover in the Gale Crater and in the middle stands the mountain. During its trek, Curiosity has gathered a plethora of valuable samples from Mars that strongly suggest the Red Planet once had water and maybe even microbial life.

Sandstone is expected to be a key piece of evidence in recreating Mars' environmental past, but scientists expect Mount Sharp to be the richest source of information available. The sandstone will tell the scientists about the layered mountain in the middle of the Gale Crater before the rover even gets there.

"We want to learn more about the wet process that turned sand deposits into sandstone here," John Grotzinger, a Curiosity project scientist at the California Institute of Technology, said in the release. "What was the composition of the fluids that bound the grains together? That aqueous chemistry is part of the habitability story we're investigating."

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