We will hold a Google+ Hangout at 2 p.m. EST, August 29 with astrobiologist Pan Conrad - deputy principal investigator with the Sample Analysis at Mars chemistry lab aboard the Curiosity rover.

Her instrument is currently "sniffing" the Martian atmosphere, and will soon start digesting bits of the soil around Curiosity, trying to answer one pressing question: Could Mars support life?

Join us, along with Fraser Cain and Amy Shira Teitel, to learn more about the Mars astrobiology mission.

If you are on Google+, visit us at: https://plus.google.com/104119652854948680692

SAM and MSL are on their way to Mars. Just after 10 am on the last Saturday in November of 2011 an Atlas V rocket lifted MSL with its ten instruments including SAM into space. With thousands of people watching both in person and on television the rocket took off and within an hour the spaceship was on its way to Mars. For the SAM team this was a great milestone in a long journey that began in earnest in December 2004 when NASA selected the proposal for this investigation for inclusion on this mission. The SAM science team's work to craft an investigation that would address fundamental questions of past and present habitability on our next door neighbor planet Mars had been accepted by NASA and the challenging work of turning these ideas into reality began in earnest at that time. After years of design, analysis, fabrication, integration, software development, and testing followed by even more testing the SAM team delivered the instrument suite to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena to be integrated into the rover in December 2011. SAM is now on its way and within a few days of landing on August 6, 2012 we hope to have our first measurements results sent back to Earth from Mars.