The Curiosity Rover on Mars. Landers and rovers allow deployment of in situ instruments.
In Situ Instruments
Although remote observations can give us much, essential information for planetary exploration, a landed mission gives the opportunity to deploy instruments that can give even more and different details. Microdevices Laboratory (MDL) has used combinations of its products and approaches to develop a wide range of in situ instruments.
Since its invention near the beginning of the 20th century, the mass spectrometer has continuously developed to become one of the standard devices for chemical and isotopic analysis. Work in MDL has taken this development further both in terms of the analytical instrument and also in coupling it with a sample preparation or separation component. As well as developing ever smaller mass spectrometers, MDL has pioneered an alternative, very valuable approach to isotopic analysis, tunable laser spectrometry. Although these and other in situ instruments produced by MDL can be flown to other planets, they also can be used in a completely different application, safeguarding the health of astronauts.