If you really wanted to work with the data, you'd want to get in touch with the instrument team. At this relatively early stage, there will be quirks that will not be corrected for/documented. Poking around with the data is fine, but you might spend a lot of time on something that is a known instrumental artifact.
One caveat with this "free" data -- usually there is an embargo period (there was with MSL, something like 90 days). During that first 90 days, a few hundred people came to be resident at JPL where the mission is controlled. They all worked in a few large rooms there, largely on Mars time. So the first batch of papers (some of which are already published) are done by the instrument teams. And this is clearly not a level playing field. (The thing is, those teams worked hard on a lot of un-fun calibration and infrastructure-building.)
Other missions have much longer embargo periods (years in some cases), and some have effectively no embargo at all. It's partly about the culture of the discipline.
http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/subscription_service/SS-201306...
If you really wanted to work with the data, you'd want to get in touch with the instrument team. At this relatively early stage, there will be quirks that will not be corrected for/documented. Poking around with the data is fine, but you might spend a lot of time on something that is a known instrumental artifact.
One caveat with this "free" data -- usually there is an embargo period (there was with MSL, something like 90 days). During that first 90 days, a few hundred people came to be resident at JPL where the mission is controlled. They all worked in a few large rooms there, largely on Mars time. So the first batch of papers (some of which are already published) are done by the instrument teams. And this is clearly not a level playing field. (The thing is, those teams worked hard on a lot of un-fun calibration and infrastructure-building.)
Other missions have much longer embargo periods (years in some cases), and some have effectively no embargo at all. It's partly about the culture of the discipline.