Soon The Robot We Sent To Mars Will Start Blasting Things With A Laser Beam

“ChemCam’s analysis begins when the rover’s mast-mounted laser fires a pulse at an area the size of a pinhead, vaporizing part of its target from several meters away. The laser can fire three pulses per second. The first few will remove dust that would otherwise obscure the target surface, enabling scientists to better observe the underlying sample. Curiosity then uses a telescope to view the glowing flash of plasma left behind and record the colors of light within that flash. A spectrometer analyzes the colors, allowing scientists to determine the elemental composition of the vaporized material.”
 — Those guys at NASA might be real brains and all, but they can do this?