1 00:00:00,010 --> 00:00:04,000 [ Music ] 2 00:00:04,020 --> 00:00:13,530 Mahaffy: SAM is a suite of instruments that is one of ten investigations on the Mars Science Laboratory, named Curiosity, which is on its way to Mars. 3 00:00:13,550 --> 00:00:19,060 I'm the Principal Investigator on SAM, the Sample Analysis at Mars experiment. 4 00:00:19,080 --> 00:00:27,780 Eigenbrode: MSL will collect a sample, either drill it or it will scoop up a powdered sample of some sort, and it will drop that into SAM. 5 00:00:27,800 --> 00:00:32,180 And then it heats it up really hot and produces a whole bunch of gases that come out of that rock. 6 00:00:32,200 --> 00:00:42,340 Mahaffy: SAM has three different instruments glued together by a system that moves sample around and moves gas around and processes the gas. 7 00:00:42,360 --> 00:00:52,580 Eigenbrode: The isotopes of those gases will tell us about the processes that formed them. In particular, it helps us identify organic molecules that might be present. 8 00:00:52,600 --> 00:01:01,730 And that is a big secret of Mars, where are those organic molecules and where did they come from? So SAM will help us identify those. 9 00:01:01,750 --> 00:01:07,380 Conrad: On Earth we have the luxury of putting in sample after sample into each laboratory apparatus. 10 00:01:07,400 --> 00:01:14,220 Once you go to another planet, every dot of every electron that you use is measured. 11 00:01:14,240 --> 00:01:25,030 So one way in which SAM differs from earthbound instrunemts is that it is very, very sensitive just like instruments that take up a whole benchtop in the laboratory, 12 00:01:25,050 --> 00:01:29,980 but it's realitively tiny, it's about the size of a microwave oven. 13 00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:36,680 Mars is a puzzle: we don't know whether life ever arose on Mars, we don't know if there is life there now. 14 00:01:36,700 --> 00:01:45,700 But what we can measure is what the potential is for habitability on Mars, and we can do this by looking at the complete chemical picture.