For NASA, it's the little things

This artist concept depicts NASA's Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life. Image courtesy NASA.

An imminent NASA mission featuring Curiosity—the largest and most advanced rover ever launched into space—will be tasked with roaming the surface of Mars trying to discover whether the Red Planet ever had the potential to support life, according the NASA Web site.

The Curiosity rover is equipped with multiple cameras and instruments, including the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument that "can hit rocks with a laser powerful enough to excite a pinhead-size spot into a glowing, ionized gas," then observe the flash through a telescope to analyze the resulting spectrum of light, according to NASA. The ChemCam is said to be capable of identifying the chemical elements in the target material.

The rock-zapping laser instrument dates back to a demonstration observed by Roger Wiens 13 years ago at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "In 1997," NASA reported, "while working on an idea for using lasers to investigate the moon, Wiens visited a chemistry laboratory building where a colleague, Dave Cremers, had been experimenting with a different laser technique. Cremers set up a cigar-size laser powered by a little 9-volt radio battery and pointed [the laser] at a rock across the room.

"Cremers pressed a button, [and] an invisible beam from the laser set off a flash on a rock across the room. The flash was ionized gas, or plasma, generated by the energy from the laser exciting atoms in the rock. A spectrometer pointed at the glowing plasma recorded the intensity of light at different wavelengths for determining the rock's atomic ingredients."

The ChemCam can collect information about rocks or patches of soil up to about 23' away. That capability will help the rover team survey the Mar's surface and select the targets to investigate further by drilling or scooping up material for additional tests on board the Curiosity.

The rover houses the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite, which will be used to study samples of water, carbon and other important building blocks of life in the Martian soil and atmosphere.

"With the 10 science instruments on the rover," NASA explained, "the team will assess whether any environments in the landing area have been favorable for microbial life and for preserving evidence about whether life existed."

In late 2011, NASA will launch Curiosity and the other parts of the flight system, delivering the rover to the surface of Mars in August 2012.