1909 Lincoln Cent Will Be Touching Down On Mars Sun Night

So sometime in the future an Alien race will wander into our Solar System. Then they land on Mars to do a little surveying and find that Penny. I would think if there is a Numismatist Alien on that ship, his fist words would be something like "Great, what a bunch of Cheapskates". "I travel millions of Light Years and what do I get, a lousy Penny".

Manned Mars missions are only out of the question "for now." They may still be in our future, and not necessarily far off! It'd be hilarious if an astronaut on the first mission did, in fact, grab the coin and bring it back . . . I'm betting his family would never go hungry, if he decided to sell.

I can only guess that a lot of people are asking about the Lincoln Cent.
Have you been watching the briefings? First order of business seems to be uploading the final rover software.
After that, they'll start testing and calibrating the instruments--including taking that photo, I'm sure.
It's just a matter of time before it's on NASA's site. Here's the latest briefing.

I received my response from NASA...here is my response I received from the Freedom of Information Act I requested for pics of the Lincoln Cent...

Your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request dated August 13, 2012, for release of information from the files of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) received in FOIA processing at the NASA Management Office-Jet Propulsion Laboratory on August 13, 2012. You requested the following:

"Photos of the 1909 VDB Penny from The Mars Rover: Curiosity taken on Mars during calibration of its cameras."

This is to advise that I could not locate any responsive Government records for your request. However, images of the 1909 VDB penny on Mars have yet to be taken. Once this happens, the raw images will be automatically released to the public, normally within 24 hours, by posting them to the web site at: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/

You have appeal rights concerning these actions.

Excellent, you got a quick response from the Federal Government - that's encouraging. Now get back to them and ask them who killed Kennedy.

Thinking back about all the pro's and con's about us landing on the Moon, then looking at the possibility of this topic. By that I mean the pessimistic view point is what if there was no Cent sent to Mars anyway? Who could prove it? How does anyone really know if it is a Lincoln Cent and what is the date on it if it is there at all? Who is going there to see if it is there? With all the STUFF the government tells us that we never really know if true, this entire coin thing could be a story invented by the Mint to inspire more ooin collecting.
A cent being Copper could start to combine with very little Oxygen to form Cu2O on the surface. With a small amount of CO2 and a bit of moisture, that could start a reaction creating [CuCO3-Cu(OH)2] or Copper Carbonate. This would eventually rot away that entire coin, if it is really there.

Danester thats funny!

Here ya go--the first picture of the MAHLI calibration target on Mars, including the 1909 LWC.
I have included a full-resolution image, as well as a portion of NASA's caption, the entirety is here.

The MAHLI calibration target includes a penny at the center of this image, plus color chips, a metric standardized bar graphic, and (just below the penny) a stair-step pattern for depth calibration.

The coin is from 1909. That was the first year Lincoln pennies were minted and the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. The penny is a nod to field geologists' informal practice of placing a coin as a size reference in close-up photographs of rocks, and it gives the public a familiar object for perceiving size on Mars easily.