ChemCam, an instrument package, has been approved as part of the next landing mission to Mars. Instead of having to navigate up to a rock and physically brush off its dust mechanically, ChemCam will ablate the dust from a distance with a laser. Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has become an advanced analytical tool with applications in medical diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and meteorological, archaeological, and geological sciences. The technology has improved over the past decade to the point where no sample preparation is needed and where results are provided in real time. LIBS is easy to use and can reveal information on just about any element in any form. The LIBS instrument to be part of ChemCam is suitable for spectroanalysis at low atmospheric pressures and is being provided in a joint effort with the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements in France. ChemCam, a suite of two instruments mounted to the mast of the rover, has electronics in the rover's body. One instrument is the LIBs component, and the other is a remote microimager. The laser unit will generate a series of variable frequency pulsed bursts to produce a glowing plasma from any sample or rock at distances of between 2-13m from the rover. The vaporized plasma will be analyzed by the spectrometer and compared with a spectral library of Earth samples. One particular advantage of stand-off remote sensing with ChemCam is the ability to analyze martian rocks that cannot be reached by the rover.