No, is purely geological. Though it has one experiment on SAM, one of the six gas chromatograph columns detects chirality
Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)
GC4 chirasilDex (Chiral compound separation)
And apparently in the mass range to detect amino acids.
The Mars Curiosity Rover Can Detect Chiral Compounds.
But not designed especially to find life signatures.
You get chirality in organics in meteorites (and quite possibly comets too - that's one of the things the Philae Lander hopes to find out).
On Mars present day life is likely to be sparse, hard to find, and most past life on the surface severely degraded and hard to spot. So I expect that it's chances of spotting anything unambiguously life is probably low.
This is because of NASA policy decisions rather than technology. The US was going to send a suite of instruments able to spot life on Mars called UREY as a collaboration with the ESA - but pulled out of the project.
Instead ESA is now going it alone as ExoMars due to be launched to Mars in 2018 with precursor technology demo launched in 2016. This will be the first mission since Viking in the 1970s to Mars able to detect life on the surface, and it is of course far more sensitive than Viking. It's got a reasonable chance I think. Present life only if it is very common (as in, a few microbes here and there almost anywhere on Mars) as it is not going to an especially likely place for present day life.
Landing site chosen mainly for past life so it's probably got a decent chance of detecting something. Though we may need to send several expeditions to Mars to find it, past life is likely to be quite hard to find also. Because over billions of years nearly all the organics get degraded, millions of tons of organics degraded down to single molecules if on the surface over 3 billion years.
A few meters below the surface is much better so need freshly excavated deposit (e.g. fresh crater) or drill or both. ExoMars can drill two meters. Ideally want to drill 10 meters for undisturbed undegraded organics. So - is probably just first of many rovers, 10 meters is not far at all to dig and robotic moles can probably dig hundreds of meters, even kilometers into Mars surface in the future.
We can also search for present day life at some of the sites on Mars thought top of the list to search for present day microbial (or maybe lichen type macro) life. No expeditions currently planned to those places and is a bit of a planetary protection challenge to sterilize the spacecraft adequately for them.
Anyway ExoMars is the one to look forward to especially in search for life on Mars, it's instruments are designed specifically to search for life:
The ExoMars programme 2016-2018
It's just a start, there are many other instruments we can send to Mars to search for life as well as drilling deep for past or present life and looking in places likely to have present day life. And can't see microbes or organics from orbit of course.
Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)
GC4 chirasilDex (Chiral compound separation)
And apparently in the mass range to detect amino acids.
The Mars Curiosity Rover Can Detect Chiral Compounds.
But not designed especially to find life signatures.
You get chirality in organics in meteorites (and quite possibly comets too - that's one of the things the Philae Lander hopes to find out).
On Mars present day life is likely to be sparse, hard to find, and most past life on the surface severely degraded and hard to spot. So I expect that it's chances of spotting anything unambiguously life is probably low.
This is because of NASA policy decisions rather than technology. The US was going to send a suite of instruments able to spot life on Mars called UREY as a collaboration with the ESA - but pulled out of the project.
Instead ESA is now going it alone as ExoMars due to be launched to Mars in 2018 with precursor technology demo launched in 2016. This will be the first mission since Viking in the 1970s to Mars able to detect life on the surface, and it is of course far more sensitive than Viking. It's got a reasonable chance I think. Present life only if it is very common (as in, a few microbes here and there almost anywhere on Mars) as it is not going to an especially likely place for present day life.
Landing site chosen mainly for past life so it's probably got a decent chance of detecting something. Though we may need to send several expeditions to Mars to find it, past life is likely to be quite hard to find also. Because over billions of years nearly all the organics get degraded, millions of tons of organics degraded down to single molecules if on the surface over 3 billion years.
A few meters below the surface is much better so need freshly excavated deposit (e.g. fresh crater) or drill or both. ExoMars can drill two meters. Ideally want to drill 10 meters for undisturbed undegraded organics. So - is probably just first of many rovers, 10 meters is not far at all to dig and robotic moles can probably dig hundreds of meters, even kilometers into Mars surface in the future.
We can also search for present day life at some of the sites on Mars thought top of the list to search for present day microbial (or maybe lichen type macro) life. No expeditions currently planned to those places and is a bit of a planetary protection challenge to sterilize the spacecraft adequately for them.
Anyway ExoMars is the one to look forward to especially in search for life on Mars, it's instruments are designed specifically to search for life:
The ExoMars programme 2016-2018
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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