This week’s announcement of the discovery of flowing water on Mars has thrilled space-lovers world-wide. And this discovery has a New Mexico connection. Roger Wiens leads a team at Los Alamos National Lab that developed ChemCam, an instrument aboard Curiosity that allows the rover to rapidly identify what Martian rocks and soil are made of. Roger and his team are hard at work on an even more powerful instrument, the SuperCam, to be installed on a rover that will be launched in 2020.
He took some time out this week to talk to KSFR about the discovery of water on the red planet, and the potential role of his work in answering the next big question about Mars: whether the planet is home to living organisms.