Emily Lakdawalla • November 7, 2012

Cosmoquest Science Hour, Wednesday: Take a taste of Mars with Pamela Conrad, Curiosity SAM Instrument Deputy PI

I'm hosting this week's Cosmoquest Astronomy Hour on Google+. For the last few Hangouts I've just been doing Curiosity updates myself, but with the Sample Analysis at Mars team gave a report on their first results last week I knew I would need to ask for help in explaining the instrument and what it's telling us about Mars. So I'm grateful to the SAM deputy principal investigator, Pamela Conrad, for taking the time to join me at 1600 PDT / 2300 UTC on Wednesday. I'll embed the video here when we go live; or you can come back to this post after it's over to watch the replay. Feel free to add comments here with questions you'd like me to answer!

NASA / JPL-Caltech

Curiosity's complex sampling system

Components of Curiosity's Sample Acquisition, Processing and Handling (SA-SPaH) subsystem and where they are located on the rover.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

Curiosity's sampling system from above

An overhead view of Curiosity's Sample Acquisition, Processing and Handling (SA-SPaH) subsystem.

Emily Lakdawalla

Senior Editor and Planetary Evangelist for The Planetary Society
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