The MSL will be armed with a laser so we can better understand the minerals in martian rock.
NASA
The scoop: Ryan Anderson is a PhD student at Cornell University who studies landing sites for MSL and zaps rocks with lasers. He also runs the Martian Chronicles blog and tweets as @marschronicler in his spare time.
The Mars Exploration Rovers have been on Mars for my entire scientific career.
In January of 2004, while I was taking undergraduate courses and working on my very first research project, Spirit and Opportunity came to a bouncing, rolling halt on the surface of Mars and began an epic journey of discovery that continues today.
The rovers shattered their 90 day life expectancy; Spirit is on sol 1941 and Opportunity is on sol 1920. A 'sol' is a Martian day, and lasts 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth.
In that time, they have both found evidence for water on Mars, and they continue to return spectacular results daily. For the last two years, as part of the panoramic camera team, I have been lucky enough to be among the first to see some of those results.
Of course, Spirit and Opportunity are showing their age. Opportunity has arthritis in her shoulder, and her infrared vision is clouded with dust. Spirit has been dragging a broken front wheel for years -- inadvertently using it to dig up some her most significant discoveries -- and has shown some occasional signs of Alzheimer's.
Both rovers have also weathered planet-wide dust storms and nasty sand traps. All signs indicate that they will keep on roving for quite a while, but they won't last forever. Even as NASA continues to extend the MER mission, we're looking ahead to the next Mars rover.
The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), recently dubbed 'Curiosity', is a big, powerful rover. It stands over 7 feet tall and weighs nearly 2000 pounds. With a plutonium power source, Curiosity doesn't have to worry about dust storms, and it carries a formidable array of scientific instruments.
The MSL mission objective is to determine the habitability of Mars -- past, present and future -- so Curiosity will carry an extensive organic chemistry lab to search for 'biomarkers' on the surface. It will also have cameras, of the panoramic and microscopic variety, and instruments to monitor the weather and to detect hydrogen (and therefore water) underground.
MSL will also be a skilled geologist, able to analyze rock samples with x-ray diffraction to determine their mineralogy, and bombard the rocks with alpha particles to determine their elemental chemistry. As if all of that wasn't enough, the MSL is also equipped with a high-powered laser.
No, it's not for fighting off Martians. The ChemCam laser, which I am involved with as a part of my thesis, is used to vaporize rock targets up to 7 meters away.
The laser pumps enough energy into a tiny portion of the rock that its atoms are stripped of their electrons and become a super-hot plasma. As the electrons frantically try to recombine with the atomic nuclei, they give off light. Each element on the periodic table gives off slightly different colors of light, allowing us to tell exactly what the target is made of.
Curiosity's nominal mission requires it to survive at least two Earth years and drive at least twenty kilometers.
Because of its new, insane-sounding "sky-crane" landing system, MSL will be able to access landing sites that previous missions couldn't. Any of the four potential landing sites will be spectacular beyond anything that we have seen so far with the MERs, and will give us a window into the conditions early in Mars' history when water was abundant.
Curiosity launches in 2011, a few months after I defend my thesis. The MERs will likely be roving Mars for the duration of my PhD, and then with uncanny timing, MSL will arrive on Mars just in time to start my post-doctorate career.
Considering Spirit and Opportunity have lasted more than twenty times their required lifetimes, it is a safe bet that if MSL lands safely, it will be roving Mars and making discoveries for many years to come. I can't wait to see where Curiosity takes me!
The views expressed are the author's alone and do not represent the official position of the Discovery Channel, NASA or Cornell.
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