While the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) robotic geologists have been making important discoveries on Mars for the last four years, NASA has been planning, designing and building the next generation rover, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) that will join them in 2012.  Set to launch in Fall 2011, MSL is intended to take the next step in investigating the possibility of life on Mars. Beyond looking for evidence of water, MSL will assess the habitability of one, yet-to-be-determined site on the Martian surface. Habitability is the potential of a Martian environment to support life, whether past or present. The geology, chemistry, mineralogy and environmental conditions of a site all influence its habitability. MSL, which is roughly the size of a small car and thus is significantly larger than MER (image, left), will carry a sophisticated suite of instruments that will work together to investigate all the factors that influence habitability.

Among the scientists that will guide MSL to interesting targets and interpret data from the mission are CMS Director Meenakshi Wadhwa and CMS Assistant Director Michelle Minitti. Wadhwa is a member of the MSL science team as a Co-Investigator on the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of instruments. SAM is aimed at finding and analyzing elements important to life such as carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen and any organic compounds that contain these elements. SAM’s gas chromatograph will separate any mixture of organic compounds MSL finds into individual components for identification. The SAM mass spectrometer and tunable laser spectrometer will measure the molecular and isotopic composition of rock and atmospheric samples. CMS Assistant Director Michelle Minitti is a Co-Investigator on the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera. Riding on the end of the rover’s arm, MAHLI will give scientists microscopic views of targets. MAHLI has color imaging and focus capabilities and white light LED’s for illuminating a target in shadow or at night.  It also carries longwave ultraviolet (UV) LED’s much like a commercial blacklight for looking for fluorescent materials on Mars.

You can learn more about the MSL mission and keep abreast of mission developments at http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/