Dr Susanne Schwenzer in the University’s research centre for physical and environmental sciences is part of a team which will study minerals formed when hot or cold water interacts with rocks on Mars.
“We already know that there is water on Mars,” said Susanne. “Now, we want to know the temperature of the water and whether it is clean and supportive of potential life - or if it is poisonous. We also want to know if Mars has niches where microbial life could have existed.”
Susanne joins a mission led by Dr John Bridges, Reader in Planetary Science at the University of Leicester.
The Mars Science Laboratory mission, landing NASA’s most advanced planetary rover called Curiosity, is a deploying the most powerful suite of instruments yet sent to the Red Planet.
The rover is scheduled to land at 6.31am UK time on Monday 6 August, beside a Martian mountain within Gale Crater called Mt. Sharp, to begin two years of unprecedented scientific detective work.
Curiosity will also carry the biggest, most advanced suite of instruments for scientific studies ever sent to the Martian surface. The rover will analyse a dozen or so samples scooped from the soil and extracted from rocks.
The record of the planet's climate and geology is essentially "written in the rocks and soil"-in their formation, structure, and chemical composition. The rover's onboard laboratory will study rocks, soils, and the local geologic setting in order to decide if the conditions on Mars were able to support microbial life.
Prior to the landing, the MSL spacecraft will decelerate significantly from a speed of about 13,200 miles per hour to enable the rover to achieve a landing speed of about 1.7 miles per hour. The success of the landing is a critical milestone toward the goal of sending humans to Mars by 2030.
