Episode 11 - Mad About Manganese (feat. Nina Lanza)




WeMartians Podcast show

Summary: The Mars Curiosity Rover has an impressive suite of instruments, but none incite as much excitement as ChemCam, a laser/camera combo that vaporizes rocks and analyzes their components. ChemCam is firing more than it ever has before, and Nina Lanza, a staff scientist on its team, is helping make some pretty remarkable discoveries with it. On this episode, Nina tells us about a high concentration of manganese recently uncovered that tells us a lot about Mars' past, and suggests that it might have been complete with a lot more oxygen than we initially thought.