Curiosity Searches for Life with SAM

For the past year or so, conspiracy theoreticians have joined hands and, building on the at times poorly timed and organized NASA press conferences, have decided that all the info about black holes, asteroids or strange gas formations are just a clever way to ease the world into a brave new world, filled with aliens. And the latest announcement from NASA will only fuel those theories.

The American space agency is about to take a break from the so far unfruitful shuttle program and turn its attention towards an older, but still as vivid dream it once had: exploring Mars.

Currently under development at NASA and partner laboratories across the world, the next NASA Mars astronaut, the rover Curiosity, is currently being fitted with a device which would help it detect life.

Built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the so-called Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) will be used by Curiosity to find and engage more or less hostile aliens on the Red Planet (this could be the conspiracy theory version).

The NASA version is that SAM would be used to sniff organic molecules in the Martian soil, little particles (as NASA very eloquently puts it) can exist without life, but life as we know it cannot exist without them.

"If we don't find any organics, that's useful information," said Paul Mahaffy, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "That would mean the best place to look for evidence about life on Mars may not be near the surface. It may push us to look deeper."

SAM will be the largest instrument fitted on the Curiosity. In December, the agency presented the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) tool which will be used to analyze chemical elements in rocks.

The new Mars rover, the most advanced created so far, will launch in the fall of 2011. It's specific mission is to determine whether Mars is or ever was habitable, making it perhaps one of the most important missions in recent years.