11 – Mad About Manganese (feat. Nina Lanza)
Planetary Scientist Nina Lanza joins Jake to talk about the ChemCam instrument on Curiosity and the discovery of manganese in Gale Crater.
WeMartians Podcast · WeMartians Podcast
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Show Notes
The Mars Curiosity Rover has an impressive suite of instruments, but none incite as much excitement as ChemCam, a laser/camera combo that vaporizes rocks and analyzes their components. ChemCam is firing more than it ever has before, and Nina Lanza, a staff scientist on its team, is helping make some pretty remarkable discoveries with it. On this episode, Nina tells us about a high concentration of manganese recently uncovered that tells us a lot about Mars’ past, and suggests that it might have been complete with a lot more oxygen than we initially thought.
Links
- Press Release for Nina Lanza’s paper
- Nina’s Twitter Account
- ChemCam’s website
- Video showing ChemCam in action
- Curiosity’s website
- Los Alamos National Lab
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