Science Goals

The Mars Science Laboratory will begin surface operations soon after landing in August 2012 and continue for at least one Mars year (approximately two Earth years). The overall scientific goal of the mission is to explore and quantitatively assess a local region on Mars' surface as a potential habitat for life, past or present. The MSL rover is designed to carry ten scientific instruments and a sample acquisition, processing, and distribution system. The various payload elements will work together to detect and study potential sampling targets with remote and in situ measurements; to acquire samples of rock, soil, and atmosphere and analyze them in onboard analytical instruments; and to observe the environment around the rover.

MSL will investigate a site that shows clear evidence for ancient aqueous processes based on orbital data and undertake the search for past and present habitable environments. Assessment of present habitability requires an evaluation of the characteristics of the environment and the processes that influence it from microscopic to regional scales and a comparison of those characteristics with what is known about the capacity of life, as we know it, to exist in such environments. Determination of past habitability has the added requirement of inferring environments and processes in the past from observation in the present. Such assessments require the integration of a wide variety of chemical, physical, and geological observations.

MSL is not a life detection mission and is not designed to detect extant vital processes that would betray present-day microbial metabolism. Nor does it have the ability to image microorganisms or their fossil equivalents. MSL does have, however, the capability to detect complex organic molecules in rocks and soils. If present, these might be of biological origin, but could also reflect the influx of carbonaceous meteorites. More indirectly, MSL will have the analytical capability to probe other less unique biosignatures, specifically, the isotopic composition of inorganic and organic carbon in rocks and soils, particular elemental and mineralogical concentrations and abundances, and the attributes of unusual rock textures. The main challenge in establishment of a biosignature is finding patterns, either chemical or textural, that are not easily explained by physical processes. MSL will also be able to evaluate the concentration and isotopic composition of potentially biogenic atmospheric gases such as methane, which has recently been detected in the modern atmosphere. But compared to the current and past missions that have all been targeted to find evidence for past or present water, the task of searching for habitable environments is significantly more challenging (e.g., Grotzinger, Nature Geoscience, 2009). Primarily, this is because the degree to which organic carbon would be preserved on the Martian surface–even if it were produced in abundance–is unknown.

The MSL mission has four primary science objectives to meet the overall habitability assessment goal:

• The first is to assess the biological potential of at least one target environment by determining the nature and inventory of organic carbon compounds, searching for the chemical building blocks of life, and identifying features that may record the actions of biologically relevant processes.

• The second objective is to characterize the geology of the landing region at all appropriate spatial scales by investigating the chemical, isotopic, and mineralogical composition of surface and near-surface materials, and interpreting the processes that have formed rocks and soils.

• The third objective is to investigate planetary processes of relevance to past habitability (including the role of water) by assessing the long timescale atmospheric evolution and determining the present state, distribution, and cycling of water and carbon dioxide.

• The fourth objective is to characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation, including galactic cosmic radiation, solar proton events, and secondary neutrons.

These observations and measurements will individually be of great scientific interest and importance, but the overall scientific goal of assessing present and past habitability of environments at the visited sites will only come from their comprehensive integration, and this is consequently a key feature of the proposed mission. Each of the ten instruments contributes to multiple science objectives, and most of the science objectives involve contributions from several instruments. Because of the cross-instrument nature of the science return, much of the tactical operations and science assessment will be coordinated through science theme groups comprising the entire MSL science team, as discussed in a later section. Strategic science operations, data analysis, and dissemination of results will be integrated by and coordinated through the MSL Project Science Group (PSG).