[X] My Assistant

[Stephen]

I notice they haven't included among MSL's experiment package any that might be used to date rocks, presumably because such a thing would be too heavy and/or consume too much power.

What I was wondering was how much would such an experiment weigh? Is it ever likely such a tool will ever be sent to Mars on a robot? For that matter, is any ever likely to be sent with a manned mission? Or is that the sort of experiment that will probably still only be possible in a lab on Earth even a decade or two from now?

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Stephen

[djellison]

Might this hack it on MSL then?

"Sample Analysis at Mars with an integrated suite consisting of a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer, and a tunable laser spectrometer," Paul Mahaffy, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. This instrument would perform mineral and atmospheric analyses, detect a wide range of organic compounds and perform stable isotope analyses of organics and noble gases.

If you google for it - lots od PDF's about, including one which says

(6) relative abundances of refractory elements, to trace levels, in solid phase samples.
From http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:KMPNx...lient=firefox-a


Doug