Instrumentation Modeling for NASA’s Next Mars Rover Mission

Dr. Talso Chui, Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, USA

Scheduled to launch in the fall of 2009 with the goal of reaching Mars in October 2010, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is a robotic rover that will look for signs of habitable environments on the Red Planet. One of the instruments selected to fly aboard the MSL is the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument. Capable of performing both x-ray diffraction and x-ray fluorescence analyses of powdered rock samples, CheMin will catalog the chemical and mineral composition of rocks it examines.