Mars Science Laboratory

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.  Launched in November, 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), carries a sophisticated suite of instruments that will work together to investigate all the factors that influence habitability.

As a Co-Investigator on the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of instruments, CMS Director Meenakshi Wadhwa is one of the scientists who will guide MSL to interesting targets and interpret data from the mission. 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, while the SAM mass spectrometer and tunable laser spectrometer will measure the molecular and isotopic composition of rock and atmospheric samples.

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