This is a clone of an essential piece of Curiosity’s mobile chemistry kit. It was constructed here At the Goddard Space Laboratory by planetary scientist Paul Mahaffy and his team. This equipment, known as SAM, can reveal the chemicals present in the Martian rock. But for it to work, SAM needs to be fed the right sort of rock samples, correctly prepared. So Curiosity will first have to use all the other tools it has at his disposal.
SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars)
Paul Mahaffy “The very first tools are the very high resolution cameras on the mast of Curiosity. And then, when we get even closer to a sample that we may see in the distance and then approach, we’ll start using other tools. For example, on the mast is an experiment called ChemCam. ChemCam will point at a rock and fire a laser. And then look at the emissions that come off from that rock, and that’s really important because it can tell the differences to different types of rocks. So if we come across a rock that looks substantially different from rocks we’ve looked at before, then we may want to approach those samples, put out the arm, and start interrogating that rock or that outcrop with instruments that are on the arm. An element analyser and a very nice microscope, and if we examine the outcrop on the rock with those tools and decide it’s worth even further exploration, then what we do is we sample the rock. The drill into the rock, we create some powder with the sampling system and then we done that powder into SAM.”
The On-Board Science Laboratory
The chemical analysis of this powdered rock is one of the most important tests in the mission. That’s why the team is still running tests on SAM’s twin back here on earth.
Paul Mahaffy “They put a bit of powdered rock into the oven of SAM, and we slowly heated up from ambient temperature to a very hot temperature, about 1000°C. And as the sample is heated up, at different temperatures it releases different simple gases or complex gases, and that helps us determine what the mineralogy , what the mineral composition of the rock is.”
SAM can look for the chemical signatures of water and it can also detect organic compounds – the building blocks of life.
Paul Mahaffy “Our very first job on getting to Mars will be to understand if there are organic compounds that we can even detect. Mars is a very harsh environment. Ultraviolet radiation penetrates right down to the surface because there is less of an atmosphere than Earth. The same is true for a very energetic cosmic radiation that pounds in and really has the potential to destroy fragile compounds that are very close to the surface. That’s a very first-order question – are there organic compounds on Mars? Can we detect them with SAM? And if there are, then the fun really starts.”
The discovery of organic compounds on Mars would cause huge excitement right across the globe. Together with liquid water, they are regarded as essentials for life. Curiosity’s other tests will reveal whether the ancient Martian environment could have allowed life itself to form from these building blocks.
