• DOI:10.1007/S11214-012-9879-Z
• Corpus ID: 3759945

The Sample Analysis at Mars Investigation and Instrument Suite

@article{Mahaffy2012TheSA,
  title={The Sample Analysis at Mars Investigation and Instrument Suite},
  author={Paul R. Mahaffy and Christopher R. Webster and Michel Cabane and Pamela G. Conrad and Patrice Coll and Sushil K. Atreya and Robert Arvey and Michael Barciniak and Mehdi Benna and Lora V. Bleacher and William B Brinckerhoff and Jennifer L. Eigenbrode and Daniel Carignan and Mark Cascia and Robert A. Chalmers and Jason P. Dworkin and Therese Errigo and P Everson and Heather B. Franz and Rodger E. Farley and Steven Feng and Gregory L. Frazier and Caroline Freissinet and Daniel P. Glavin and Dan N. Harpold and Doug Hawk and Vincent Holmes and Christopher S. Johnson and Andrea Jones and Patrick Jordan and James W. Kellogg and Jesse Lewis and Eric Lyness and Charles Malespin and David K. Martin and J. C. Maurer and Amy C. McAdam and Douglas McLennan and Thomas J. Nolan and Marvin Noriega and Alexander A. Pavlov and Benito Prats and Eric Raaen and Oren E. Sheinman and Dave Sheppard and James Smith and Jennifer C. Stern and Florence Tan and Melissa G. Trainer and Doug W. Ming and Richard V. Morris and John Smith Jones and Cynthia Gundersen and Andrew Steele and James J. Wray and Oliver Botta and Laurie A. Leshin and Tobias C. Owen and Steven J. Battel and Bruce M. Jakosky and Heidi L. K. Manning and Steven W. Squyres and Rafael Navarro‐Gonz{\'a}lez and Christopher P. McKay and François Raulin and Robert J. Sternberg and Arnaud Buch and Paul Sorensen and Robert J. Kline-Schoder and David Coscia and Cyril Szopa and Samuel Teinturier and Curtis Baffes and Jason Feldman and Gregory J. Flesch and Siamak Forouhar and Ray Garcia and Didier Keymeulen and Steve Woodward and Bruce Block and Kenneth E. Arnett and Ryan Miller and Charles Edmonson and Stephen Gorevan and Erik Mumm},
  journal={Space Science Reviews},
  year={2012},
  volume={170},
  pages={401-478}
}

• P. Mahaffy, C. Webster, +82 authors E. Mumm
• Published 27 April 2012
• Physics
• Space Science Reviews

The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) investigation of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) addresses the chemical and isotopic composition of the atmosphere and volatiles extracted from solid samples. The SAM investigation is designed to contribute substantially to the mission goal of quantitatively assessing the habitability of Mars as an essential step in the search for past or present life on Mars. SAM is a 40 kg instrument suite located in the interior of MSL’s Curiosity rover. The SAM instruments are a quadrupole mass spectrometer, a tunable laser spectrometer, and a 6-column gas chromatograph all coupled through solid and gas processing systems to provide complementary information on the same samples. The SAM suite is able to measure a suite of light isotopes and to analyze volatiles directly from the atmosphere or thermally released from solid samples. In addition to measurements of simple inorganic compounds and noble gases SAM will conduct a sensitive search for organic compounds with either thermal or chemical extraction from sieved samples delivered by the sample processing system on the Curiosity rover’s robotic arm.