Its main objectives are thus to:

determine whether life ever arose on Mars,
characterize the climate of Mars,
characterize the geology of Mars,
prepare for human exploration.

To fulfil this mission, a rover, Curiosity, equiped of scientific instruments landed on Mars. The instruments chosen after an international call to tender are:

2 instruments with European Principal Investigators (Germany and Spain),
1 instrument with a Russian Principal Investigator,
7 instruments with American Principal Investigators, of which 2 instruments have French Co-Principal Investigators.

The French contributions to MSL instruments concern:

CHEMCAM (CHEMistry CAMera) instrument that will analyze by spectrometry a plasma light emitted after a laser shot (from a distance of 1 to 9 m) by martian rocks. IRAP (ex-CESR) will supply the sub-system set up on the rover mast (CHEMCAM-MU: Mast Unit) constituted of a laser, a telescope, a camera and the associated electronics.

SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) instrumental suite that will perform mineral and atmospheric analyzes to detect a wide range of organic components coming from the atmosphere and the ground, from rocks constitutional gases, and search for carbon and other detected atoms isotopes, as well as noble gas isotopes. The LATMOS (ex-Service d'Aéronomie) will supply one of SAM suite three instruments: the Gas Chromatograph (SAM-GC).

CNES insures, for all national partners (laboratories), the prime contractorship for the French instrument contributions to MSL.