Topic: NASA Mars rover will check for ingredients of life

[sam]

Paul Mahaffy, the scientist in charge of the largest instrument on NASA's next Mars rover, watched through glass as clean-room workers installed it into the rover. The instrument is Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. At the carefully selected landing site for the Mars rover named Curiosity, one of SAM's key jobs will be to check for carbon-containing compounds called organic molecules, which are among the building blocks of life  on Earth. The clean-room suits worn by Curiosity's builders at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are just part of the care being taken to keep biological material from Earth from showing up in results from SAM.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-nasa-mars-rover-ingredients-life.html

[Clive]

The results will be very interesting but I would be very surprised if they find any trace of life or much in the way of the building blocks of life on Mars.  We shall watch this space.   

[Simon]

So to speak. 

[sam]

The results will be very interesting but I would be very surprised if they find any trace of life or much in the way of the building blocks of life on Mars.  We shall watch this space.   

and like always be surprised.

[Clive]

Space is full of surprises!