Following an exciting descent through the thin atmosphere of Mars, the 6 wheels of the Curiosity Rover touched the surface on the floor of Gale Crater on August 6, 2012. Curiosity’s mission:  to explore the habitability of Mars – the potential of this environment to sustain life even if billions of years in the past. In the subsequent nine months of operation this mobile laboratory has effectively utilized its ten instruments to reveal fundamental new information about the atmosphere and surface that ties directly to the prime mission goal. A survey of the major findings from Curiosity in this initial phase of the mission will be given with an emphasis on results from the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) experiment developed at Goddard. With three instruments and sophisticated solid and gas processing systems, the SAM chemical laboratory measures abundances and isotopic composition of gases from the atmosphere or gases released from surface soils or rocks on heating. An additional prime investigation goal of SAM to search for organic compounds that might be preserved in rocks from ancient times is also well under way and will be described. 

About the speaker: Dr. Paul Mahaffy is chief of the Planetary Environments Laboratory at Goddard.  He is the Principal Investigator of the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) experiment on Curiosity.