NASA Mars Science
Laboratory Rover Laser Tool Ready for Testing
(22 June 2007) Los Alamos ChemCam to
vaporise rocks on Mars to determine composition
Mars mission Job
One: Get there. Job Two: Find rocks and zap them with your laser tool. Now
learn the nature of the debris by spectrographically analysing the ensuing dust
and fragments. It's every kid's dream, vaporising pebbles on other planets, and
thanks to a team at Los Alamos National Laboratory, it's going to
happen.
When the JPL-NASA Mars Science Laboratory rover launches in
2009, it will carry this combination laser-telescope unit and enable the
gadget-packed rover to know a great deal about rocks in its general vicinity.
The ChemCam package includes a mast unit, projecting above the rover with a
laser and telescope, and a body unit, the brains of the beast, with three
spectrographs and the instrument controls.
The engineering model of
ChemCam's mast unit, fresh from Thales Laser and Centre d'Etude Spatiale des
Rayonnements (CESR) in France, is undergoing rigorous testing at Los Alamos. A
team of six French experts is checking out the mast unit this week and making
sure that it is properly connected with the rest of the instrument, built at
Los Alamos. This fall the entire instrument will be shipped to the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, where more tests will take place and additional
equipment will be added.
"We're pioneering a new technique for exploring
Mars. It's really exciting to see the whole thing come together," said Roger
Wiens, project lead and a Los Alamos scientist.
The ChemCam laser emits
very short pulses of 7 nanoseconds, through a small telescope that focuses the
beam to a spot where the power density exceeds 10 megawatts per square
millimetre, producing a plasma of vaporised material from the target rock. The
unit operates on targets at distances between 4 and 30 feet. The unit also
contains a camera to take extreme close-up pictures of the targets to show
geologic context for each sample. The telescope and electronics were built by
CESR, a research institute in Toulouse, France. The mast unit was funded by
CNES, the French Space Agency. The full ChemCam flight model will be delivered
to JPL in Spring of 2008.
Scheduled to launch in the fall of 2009, Mars
Science Laboratory is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term
effort of robotic exploration of the red planet. Mars Science Laboratory is a
rover that will assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment
able to support microbial life. In other words, its mission is to determine the
planet's habitability. Los Alamos National Laboratory is a multidisciplinary
research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national
security. The Laboratory is operated by a team composed of Bechtel National,
the University of California, BWX Technologies, and Washington Group
International for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security
Administration.
Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the
safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies
to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems
related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health and global security
concerns.
(source: Los Alamos National Laboratory)