Instruments

CheMin

CheMin short for Chemistry Mineralogy instrument, will identify and measure the abundances of various materials on mars. Different minerals are linked to certain kinds of environments. We will use CheMin to search for mineral clues indicative of a past Martian environment that might have supported life.





Sam

SAM is in reality a combination of three instruments: 1) A mass spectrometer, which will identify chemical elements in the samples by their mass, 2) a gas chromatograph, which will heat soil and rock samples until they vaporize, and will then separate the resulting gases into various components for analysis, and 3) a tunable laser spectrometer, which will measure the abundance of various isotopes of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in atmospheric gases such as methane, water vapor, and carbon dioxide.

Pancam

Pancam is a high-resolution color stereo pair of CCD cameras used to image the surface and sky of Mars. It can as well be used on Venus, if we make it heat resistant and non-corossive. The Pancam Mast Assembly (PMA) allows the cameras to rotate a full 360° to obtain a view of the landscape. The camera bar itself can swing up or down through 180° of elevation. The Pancam cameras are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand (270 grams or about 9 ounces), but can generate panoramic image mosaics as large as 4,000 pixels high and 24,000 pixels around.


-Tal