Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM
Monday, May 19, 2008 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium
Douglas McLennan
"Sample Analysis of Mars"
ABSTRACT -- Sample Analysis of Mars (SAM) is a suite of instruments for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), a Mars Exploration Rover scheduled for launch in late 2009. MSL is larger than any of the previous Mars rovers. It's roughly the size of a Mini Cooper, but with the wheel base of a Hummer.
Sample Analysis of Mars is a suite of three instruments: a gas chromatograph (built in France), a tunable laser spectrometer (built at JPL), and a quadrupole mass spectrometer (built here at Goddard). These three instruments are currently at Goddard, being integrated with their gas handling system. This system will allow samples of gas, including pyrolized solid samples, to be distributed to the instruments. Today's talk will describe the instruments and their gas handling system, and will bring us up to date on the progress of integration and test.
SPEAKER -- Dr. Douglas McLennan is currently the Project Manager for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite that is being developed for flight on the Mars Science Lab (MSL) rover currently scheduled for launch in September 2009.
Prior to his current position, Dr. McLennan was the Project Manager for the Space Technology-5 (ST-5) Mission. His responsibilities included the design, assembly, integration, and test of the ST-5 flight and ground-support hardware and for the launch activity and on-orbit checkout of the spacecraft. The three ST-5 micro-spacecraft, developed in-house at Goddard, were successfully launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in March 2006.
In 1996 Dr. McLennan was appointed the Deputy Program Manager for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES).
Dr. McLennan joined Goddard in December of 1988 and served as an instrument manager for the Earth Observing System (EOS) Project. He was appointed Instrument system manager for the EOS Instruments Project in 1989 and Observatory Manager for the EOS PM Project in 1991.
Dr. McLennan received his B.Sc. in Physics in 1978 from Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario Canada. He received his M.S. in 1980 and Ph.D. in 1983 from Georgetown University, Washington D.C.