Sunrise on Mars ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY August 7, 2012 – Globe and
Mail With Curiosity safely landed on Mars, the real work begins.
And this is where Canadian expertise comes in. Designed by a
University of Guelph professor, funded by the Canadian Space
Agency and built by Canada’s MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates
Ltd., the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer is a key part of
gleaning information on Mars’s ancient history, and maybe the
secrets to life on other planets. NASA is hoping its
$2.5-billion gambit to send its rover to Mars will yield
valuable information on a planet that may likely have once been
hospitable to living creatures. Scientists want to know whether
that’s the case, what conditions supported life and what
happened to make Mars the apparently arid, acidic and
inhospitable planet it is today. So for the next three months,
University of Guelph Professor Ralf Gellert will be shuttling
between Guelph and the Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena,
Calif. As principal investigator behind the spect