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News Releases ChemCam and Mars Science Laboratory get final destination
The LANL ChemCam and CheMIN instruments on their Curiosity rover will go to the Gale Crater for their research.
July 26, 2011—After months of analysis and discussion, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover team has picked a landing site on which the rover's adventures can begin.
Within Gale Crater, the target site for the rover is a 5-kilometer-high mound of sedimentary material inside a sort of Martian "Grand Canyon." If the team is correct, the deep crater and its mounded materials could show a wet and potentially habitable history.
The rover, named Curiosity, carries the ChemCam instrument on top of an exterior mast, providing information on the chemical composition of rocks at which it can fire its laser, as well as CheMin, short for “Chemistry and Mineralogy,” a powder X-ray Diffraction (XRD) instrument that also has X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) capabilities. CheMin is part of the Analytical Laboratory of the MSL rover, located inside the main body of the rover.
ChemCam principal investigator and developer is Roger Wiens of the Laboratory's Intelligence and Space Research Division; CheMin's principal investigator is David Blake from NASA Ames; and the deputy principal investigator is David Vaniman of the Lab's Earth and Environmental Sciences Division.
See further information on the lander's proposed landing site at
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