SAM Team Celebrates Landing

Who Should Be TIME's Person of the Year 2012? - The Mars Rover! VOTE here: ti.me/YxJU1i

Caption - SAM Team celebrates a picture perfect landing! Pictured from left to rights: Mehdi Benna, Laurie Leshin, Chris Webster, Will Brinckerhoff, Paul Mahaffy, Pan Conrad, Florence Tan, and Jen Eigenbrode.

Credit: NASA

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The Curiosity rover bristles with multiple cameras and instruments, including Goddard's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite. By looking for evidence of water, carbon, and other important building blocks of life in the Martian soil and atmosphere, SAM will help discover whether Mars ever had the potential to support life. Curiosity was delivered to Gale crater, a 96-mile-wide crater that contains a record of environmental changes in its sedimentary rock, in August 2012.

Related links:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html
science.gsfc.nasa.gov/699/marsSAM.shtml
mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

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NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.

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