New Mars rover to zap rocks

This fits. Following up yesterday's posted interview with SETI's Scott Hubbard, MarsDaily says that the next Mars rover will have an astrobiology mission and come equipped with a laser to zap rocks in order to analyze their content.

The JPL-NASA Mars Science Laboratory rover launches in 2009.

The mission home page also has a very, very nice sequence of artist's stills, arranged much like Apple's cover flow album art, showing the craft in various stages of descending to the planet's surface. See it on this page.

Image: Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Wayne