The WeMartians Podcast delves into all aspects of the exploration of Mars, including robotic/human spacecraft and rocket engineering, planetary science, astronomy and other upcoming technology. Our episodes are research-supported and feature topical audio clips and special guests.

11 – Mad About Manganese (feat. Nina Lanza)

August 23, 2016 00:35:47 34.34 MB Downloads: 0

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.

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WeMartians Theme Song is “RetroFuture” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/