Mars Rocks / Canada's Contribution to Curiosity [HD]

Launch: November 25, 2011 at 10:25 a.m. Eastern

NASA is about to take a bold new step in the exploration of Planet Mars with a new rover known as Curiosity (centerpiece of the Mars Science Laboratory mission). Curiosity will seek to determine if the Red Planet ever had conditions supportive of life. Slated for launch on or after November 25, 2011, Curiosity will carry a Canadian-made geology instrument that will enable the rover to determine the chemical composition of the rocks and soil on Mars.

Curiosity's journey to Mars

After a journey of about nine months, Curiosity will land on Mars where it will conduct its science with 10 onboard instruments, including the Canadian APXS spectrometer. Source : NASA

The mobile lab will be equipped with ten different instruments, each with specialized capabilities to investigate different aspects of the rocks and soils or the current environment of the planet. Compiling the data from all the instruments will help scientists establish if Mars was once a more hospitable place, possibly at the time when life started on Earth.

Although recent missions led by Curiosity's predecessors have provided valuable data on the geological composition of our planetary neighbour, Curiosity will delve into Mars' environmental history in much greater detail than previous missions. This laboratory on wheels will act as a motorized field geologist and geochemist, probing and analysing the Martian surface using, among other things, its Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) provided by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The spectrometer, specially adapted and tuned for the mission, will analyse samples to help ascertain the potential habitability of Mars.

APXS instrument

Roughly the size of a soup can, APXS's sensor will be able to gather data day and night. It will take two to three hours to analyze a sample to determine what elements it is made of, including trace elements. A quick-look analysis can be completed in about fifteen minutes. APXS, which sits on the end of the rover's robotic arm, will move in close to a sample and bombard it with alpha particles (charged Helium nuclei) and X-rays to study the properties of the energy emitted from the sample in response. The APXS instrument on Curiosity is an updated version of the spectrometers that were successfully used on the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) and Mars Pathfinder missions.

APXS on Curiosity

APXS's components during vibration tests at MDA's laboratory in Brampton, Ontario. (Photo: MDA)

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