The Chemistry and Camera instrument being installed on the rover Curiosity can hit rocks with a laser powerful enough to turn a pinhead-size sample into a glowing, ionized gas that the instrument will observe through a telescope and, by analyzing the spectrum of light in the gas, identify the chemical elements in the target, ScienceDaily.com reported Thursday.

This will help the rover science team survey the rover's surroundings and choose which targets to drill into, or scoop up and collect for additional analysis by other instruments inside the rover, NASA says.

Curiosity will launch in late 2011 to land on the surface of Mars in August 2012.

An American and French team led by geochemist Roger Wiens with the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory proposed the instrument during NASA's 2004 open competition for participation in the Mars Science Laboratory project.

"The trick is very short bursts of the laser," Wiens said. "You really dump a lot of energy onto a small spot -- megawatts per square millimeter -- but just for a few nanoseconds."

The pinhead-size spot hit by ChemCam's laser gets as much power focused on it as a million light bulbs, for five one-billionths of a second, Wiens said.

Testing of the instrument is ongoing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in preparation for the launch between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18, 2011.

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