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The Sample Analysis at Mars Investigation and Instrument Suite

2012; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 170; Issue: 1-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/s11214-012-9879-z

1572-9672

P. R. Mahaffy, Christopher R. Webster, M. Cabane, P. G. Conrad, Patrice Coll, S. K. Atreya, Robert Arvey, Michael Barciniak, M. Benna, L. V. Bleacher, W. B. Brinckerhoff, J. L. Eigenbrode, Daniel Carignan, Mark Cascia, Robert A. Chalmers, Jason P. Dworkin, Therese Errigo, Paula Everson, H. B. Franz, Rodger Farley, Steven Feng, Gregory Frazier, Caroline Freissinet, D. P. Glavin, Daniel Harpold, Douglas Hawk, Vincent Holmes, Christopher S. Johnson, Andrea Jones, Patrick R. Jordan, James W. Kellogg, Jesse Lewis, Eric Lyness, C. A. Malespin, David K. Martin, John Maurer, A. C. McAdam, Douglas McLennan, Thomas J. Nolan, Marvin Noriega, Alexander A. Pavlov, Benito Prats, E. Raaen, Oren Sheinman, D. Sheppard, James S. Smith, J. C. Stern, Florence Tan, M. G. Trainer, D. W. Ming, R. V. Morris, J. H. Jones, Cindy Gundersen, A. Steele, J. J. Wray, Oliver Botta, L. A. Leshin, Tobias Owen, Steve Battel, B. M. Jakosky, H. L. K. Manning, S. W. Squyres, R. Navarro‐González, Christopher P. McKay, F. Raulin, R. Sternberg, A. Buch, Paul Sorensen, Robert Kline-Schoder, David Coscia, Cyril Szopa, Samuel Teinturier, Curt Baffes, Jason Feldman, Greg Flesch, Siamak Forouhar, Ray Garcia, Didier Keymeulen, Steve Woodward, Bruce Block, Ken Arnett, Ryan Miller, Charles Edmonson, Stephen Gorevan, E. Mumm,

Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life

The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) investigation of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) addresses the chemical and isotopic composition of the atmosphere and volatiles extracted from solid samples. The SAM investigation is designed to contribute substantially to the mission goal of quantitatively assessing the habitability of Mars as an essential step in the search for past or present life on Mars. SAM is a 40 kg instrument suite located in the interior of MSL's Curiosity rover. The SAM instruments are a quadrupole mass spectrometer, a tunable laser spectrometer, and a 6-column gas chromatograph all coupled through solid and gas processing systems to provide complementary information on the same samples. The SAM suite is able to measure a suite of light isotopes and to analyze volatiles directly from the atmosphere or thermally released from solid samples. In addition to measurements of simple inorganic compounds and noble gases SAM will conduct a sensitive search for organic compounds with either thermal or chemical extraction from sieved samples delivered by the sample processing system on the Curiosity rover's robotic arm.