Lab+Protocols

Lab 1: Can life survive on Mars? "The team constructed a Mars Environmental Simulation Chamber (MESCH), from which air is removed with a vacuum pump, and replaced with a thin mixture of gases equivalent to those in the martian atmosphere. The chamber has a double wall cooled with liquid nitrogen to simulate the cold temperatures experienced in the martian night. Samples of soil in glass cylinders are placed in the chamber's steel sample tubes through a small air-lock, then rotated on a carousel; exposing one sample at a time to ultraviolet-rich light from a xenon-mercury arc lamp. Cycling samples through the light beam produces a temperature rise and fall that mimics the diurnal temperature variation on Mars. The atmosphere in the chamber is sampled and subjected to molecular gas analysis to determine how the soil (and any bacteria it may contain) interacts with the atmosphere." []

Lab 2: Soil/rock composition [] -Imaging Spectrometer