LOS ALAMOS HAS IT'S LASER TECH SELECTED BY NASA FOR MARS 2020 MISSION

FROM:  LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY  

Los Alamos Laser Selected for 2020 Mars Mission

New ‘SuperCam’ instrument adds capabilities to successful ChemCam

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 31, 2014— NASA announced today that laser technology originally developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory has been selected for its new Mars mission in 2020.

“We are extremely excited to be going to Mars again,” said Los Alamos National Laboratory planetary scientist Roger Wiens, Principal Investigator of the newly selected SuperCam team and current principal investigator of the Curiosity Rover’s ChemCam Team. “More importantly for the mission, I know SuperCam is the very best remote sensor that NASA can have aboard.”

SuperCam builds upon the successful capabilities demonstrated aboard the Curiosity Rover during NASA’s current Mars Mission. SuperCam will allow researchers to sample rocks and other targets from a distance using a laser. In addition to harnessing Los-Alamos developed Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) technology—which can determine the elemental composition of the target from more than 20 feet away—SuperCam adds another spectrum to its laser for Raman and time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy: A technique partially refined at Los Alamos and the University of Hawaii that provides the molecular makeup of a target, therefore allowing geologists to determine mineralogy and search for organic materials. The enhancements provided by these two institutions include the successful demonstration of performing these measurements at long distances and in miniaturization of the instrumentation.

SuperCam also will add color to its high-resolution visible imaging capability as well as visible and infrared spectroscopy. The updates make SuperCam the perfect instrument to provide fine-scale mineralogy, chemistry, organic detection, and color images, with the added bonus of being able to dust off a surface via laser blasts.

The new instrument will occupy a similar volume on the upcoming rover as the ChemCam instrument does aboard Curiosity and will weigh nearly the same as well.

In addition, Los Alamos will build the detector electronics for the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument.

SHERLOC is a spectrometer that will provide fine-scale imaging and use an ultraviolet (UV) laser to determine fine-scale mineralogy and detect organic compounds. SHERLOC will be the first UV Raman spectrometer to fly to the surface of Mars and will provide complementary measurements with other instruments in the payload. Tony Nelson of Los Alamos’s Space Electronics and Signal Processing Group will lead the efforts in constructing the electronics. Los Alamos laser scientists Sam Clegg of Los Alamos’s Physical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy Group and Wiens are part of the SHERLOC instrument science team.

SuperCam is a continuing effort between Los Alamos and the IRAP research institution in Toulouse France, and the French Space Agency (CNES), with additional collaboration from the University of Hawaii and the University of Valladolid (UVA) in Spain.

According to NASA, agency managers made the instrument selections for the upcoming mission out of 58 proposals received in January from researchers and engineers worldwide. Proposals received were twice the usual number submitted for instrument competitions in the recent past.

The Mars 2020 mission will be based on the design of the highly successful Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, which landed almost two years ago, and currently is operating on Mars. The new rover will carry more sophisticated, upgraded hardware and new instruments to conduct geological assessments of the rover's landing site, determine the potential habitability of the environment, and directly search for signs of ancient Martian life.

Scientists will use the Mars 2020 rover to identify and select a collection of rock and soil samples that will be stored for potential return to Earth by a future mission. The Mars 2020 mission is responsive to the science objectives recommended by the National Research Council's 2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey.

The Mars 2020 rover also will help advance knowledge of how future human explorers could use natural resources available on the surface of the Red Planet. An ability to live off the Martian land would transform future exploration of the planet. Designers of future human expeditions can use this mission to understand the hazards posed by Martian dust and demonstrate technology to process carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to produce oxygen. These experiments will help engineers learn how to use Martian resources to produce oxygen for human respiration and potentially oxidizer for rocket fuel.

CHEMCAM EXCEEDS 100.000 SHOTS ON MARS

Curiosity Heads To Mars.  Credit:  NASA

FROM:  LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Los Alamos’s ChemCam team fills scrapbook from Mars road trip

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Dec. 5, 2013—The ChemCam laser instrument aboard NASA’s Curiosity rover fired its 100,000th shot recently, chronicling its adventures on Mars with a coffee-table-book’s worth of spectral data that might rival snapshots gathered during a long and satisfying family vacation here on Earth. ChemCam zaps rocks with a high-powered laser to determine their composition and carries a camera that can survey the Martian landscape.

“ChemCam has greatly exceeded our expectations,” said Roger Wiens, Los Alamos National Laboratory planetary scientist and Principal Investigator of the ChemCam Team. “The information we’ve gleaned from the instrument will continue to enhance our understanding of the Red Planet, and will nicely complement information from the other nine instruments aboard Curiosity as we continue our odyssey to Mount Sharp.”

Curiosity landed on Mars at the edge of Gale Crater near the base of Mount Sharp on Aug. 6, 2012. The rover is a rolling laboratory about the size of a small SUV that will roam the Martian landscape for at least another year in search of clues about the planet’s habitability. Using a suite of 10 instruments that can perform diverse and amazing tasks ranging from digging up and baking soil samples, to shooting rocks with pinpoint accuracy with a high-powered laser, Curiosity already has helped show scientists that Mars apparently once had a very wet history and still retains enough moisture in its dust and rocks to quench the thirst of future astronauts.

Curiosity’s laser instrument, ChemCam, fires a short laser burst that packs the wallop of nearly one million light bulbs into a single pinpoint of light to vaporize rock and dust. A camera aboard the instrument reads the spectral signature of the resultant flash and translates the information into the composition of whatever happened to be in ChemCam’s crosshairs at the moment. The instrument also has a camera that scientists have been using to survey the Martian landscape.

The ChemCam concept was developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, but the instrument aboard Curiosity is a partnership between Los Alamos and the French national space agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and research agency, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

The U.S. operations center for the ChemCam team is located in downtown Los Alamos. Wiens said a teleprompter showing the latest slideshows from Mars will soon be erected in downtown Los Alamos for public viewing.

“Like those family slideshows from summer vacations along Route 66, people will be able to enjoy and experience the highlights of our trip,” Wiens said. “ChemCam was designed to fire one million shots, so we’ll have lots of stories to tell later on.”

MARTIAN ROCK VARNISH



This dual image of a Martian rock taken by the ChemCam instrument aboard the Curiosity rover shows a rock at the "Rocknest" area on Mars before it was interrogated with ChemCam's high-powered laser (left) and after interrogation by 600 laser blasts (right). The crosshairs in the darkened portion of the image at right shows where the laser beam penetrated to a depth of at least 1 mm as a result of the repeated shots. The ChemCam laser vaporizes a small amount of material that can be read by a spectrometer to determine the target's composition. Los Alamos National Laboratory postdoctoral researcher Nina Lanza is studying whether Martian rocks are coated with dust or some other substance, and she presented her research at the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference at The Woodlands, Texas. (photo credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory)

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Los Alamos Science Sleuth on the Trail of a Martian Mystery
Postdoctoral researcher sees promise in data from cutting room floor


THE WOODLANDS, Texas, March 19, 2013—When it comes to examining the surface of rocks on Mars with a high-powered laser, five is a magic number for Los Alamos National Laboratory postdoctoral researcher Nina Lanza.

During a poster session today at the 44th Annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference at The Woodlands, Texas, Lanza described how the laser-shooting ChemCam instrument aboard the Curiosity rover currently searching the surface of Mars for signs of habitability has shown what appears to be a common feature on the surface of some very different Martian rocks during Curiosity’s first 90 days on the Red Planet.

But exactly what that common feature is remains an intriguing mystery—and one that Lanza intends to solve.

The ChemCam instrument uses an extremely powerful laser to vaporize a pinpoint of rock surface. The instrument then reads the chemical composition of the vaporized sample with a spectrometer. The highly accurate laser can fire multiple pulses in the same spot, providing scientists with an opportunity to gently interrogate a rock sample, even up to a millimeter in depth. Many rocks are zapped 30 to 50 times in a single location, and one rock was zapped 600 times.

Members of the ChemCam team generally discard results from the first five laser blasts because of a belief that after the first five blasts, the laser has penetrated to a depth that provides a true representative sample of rock chemistry.

Instead of tossing out those data, however, Lanza looked at them specifically across a diverse set of Martian rocks. She found that the first five shots had chemical similarities regardless the rock type. What’s more, after five shots, like other scientists had noticed, the spectrum from the vaporized rock stabilized into a representative sample of the rock type below.

"Why is it always five shots?" Lanza wondered.

It could be the first five shots were reading a layer of dust that had settled onto the surface of every rock, but results in laboratories on Earth seem to indicate that the first laser blast creates a tiny shockwave that is very effective at clearing dust from the sample. Therefore, if the first blast is dusting off the rocks, the remaining four blasts could be showing that Martian rocks are coated by a substance, similar in structure if not composition, to the dark rock varnish appearing on Earth rocks in arid locations like the desert Southwest.

"The thing about rock varnishes is the mechanism behind why they form is not clearly understood," Lanza said. "Some people believe that rock varnish results from an interaction of small amounts of water from humidity in the air with the surface of rocks—a chemical reaction that forms a coating. Others think there could be a biological component to the formation of rock varnishes, such as bacteria or fungi that interact with dust on the rocks and excrete varnish components onto the surface." Lanza is quick to point out that she’s making no concrete claim as to the identity or origin of whatever is being seen during the first five shots of each ChemCam sampling. The common signature from the first five blasts could indeed be entirely surface dust, or it could be a rock coating or a rind formed by natural weathering processes.

As the mission progresses, Lanza hopes that integrating other instruments aboard Curiosity with ChemCam sampling activities could help rule out unknowns such as surface dust, while careful experiments here on Earth could provide crucial clues for solving the Martian mystery of the first five shots.

"If we can find a reason for this widespread alteration of the surface of Martian rocks, it will tell us something about the Martian environment and the amount of water present there," Lanza said. "It will also allow us to make the argument that what we’re seeing is the result of some kind of current geological process, which could give us insight into extraterrestrial geology or even terrestrial geology if what we’re seeing is a coating similar to what we find here on Earth."
 

MARS SCIENCE TEAM TOUTS CHEMCAM DATA



This image shows the ChemCam mast unit mounted on the Curiosity rover as it is being prepared in the clean room prior to the launch of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission. ChemCam fires a powerful laser that can sample Martian rocks and provide critical clues about the Red Planet's habitability. (Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory)

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
ChemCam Data Abundant at Planetary Conference
Laser instrument aboard Curiosity rover provides well over 40,000 shots so far

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 15, 2013—Members of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover ChemCam team will present more than two dozen posters and talks next week during the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.

"ChemCam has performed flawlessly in its first six months, providing more than a gigabyte of exciting new information about the Red Planet," said Los Alamos National Laboratory planetary scientist Roger Wiens, Principal Investigator of the ChemCam Team. "Since Curiosity’s successful landing on Mars on August 6, 2012, ChemCam has fired more than 40,000 shots at more than a thousand different locations with its high-powered laser. Each of those shots has yielded exciting information about the Martian habitat, and our team has been extremely busy making sense of what we’re seeing in anticipation of presenting it to planetary scientists and the public. The Curiosity mission continues to amaze us with new discoveries, finding Mars to be very Earth-like in many ways."

The ChemCam team’s work will be showcased during a series of special sessions at the conference on Monday and during a blitz of poster sessions on Tuesday. The international team of researchers will provide everything from a geological tour of the Martian landscape during the first six months of the SUV-sized rover’s cross-country journey, to investigations of the dusty coating that covers every Martian rock, to a discussion of how scientists used calibration targets mounted on the rover to fine tune differences between spectral readings taken on Earth and on Mars.

ChemCam team member Nina Lanza was selected by conference organizers to chronicle her experiences as a presenter and a conference attendee through microblogging activities all week. Lanza will provide commentary and highlights of each day’s events through her Twitter feed (@marsninja).

The ChemCam system is one of 10 instruments mounted on the Curiosity rover—a six-wheeled mobile laboratory that will roam more than 12 miles of the planet’s surface during the course of one Martian year (98 Earth weeks). ChemCam can fire an extremely powerful laser pulse up to 23 feet onto an area the size of a pinhead. The laser vaporizes a tiny portion of the target. A spectrometer then translates the spectral colors of the plasma into the chemical composition of the vaporized material.

The ChemCam team is comprised of researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory and the French space agency, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, as well as other researchers from the U.S., France, Canada, and the United Kingdom. ChemCam operations are now commanded from centers at Los Alamos and Toulouse, France.

FIRST RESULTS FROM CHEMCAM LASER

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

ChemCam Laser First Analyses Yield Beautiful Results

Curiosity beams back strong, clear data from ‘scour’ area on Martian surface

LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO, August 23, 2012—Members of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover ChemCam team, including Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists, squeezed in a little extra target practice after zapping the first fist-sized rock that was placed in the laser’s crosshairs last weekend.

Much to the delight of the scientific team, the laser instrument has fired nearly 500 shots so far that have produced strong, clear data about the composition of the Martian surface.

"The spectrum we have received back from Curiosity is as good as anything we looked at on Earth," said Los Alamos National Laboratory planetary scientist Roger Wiens, Principal Investigator of the ChemCam Team. "The entire MSL team was very excited about this and we popped a little champagne."

When ChemCam fires its extremely powerful laser pulse, it briefly focuses the energy of a million light bulbs onto an area the size of a pinhead. The laser blast vaporizes a small amount of its target up to seven meters (23 feet) away. The resultant flash of glowing plasma is viewed by the system’s 4.3-inch aperture telescope, which sends the light down an optical fiber to a spectrometer located in the body of the rover. There, the colors of light from the flash are recorded and then sent to Earth, enabling scientists to determine the elemental composition of the vaporized material.

Scientists tested the system on Earth in a chamber that simulated the Martian atmosphere. Some of the initial spectral data from Mars look similar to some of the terrestrial standards at first glance. In the coming weeks, ChemCam researchers will pore over the data to look for tiny variations among the peaks and valleys within spectral data captured on Earth and on Mars. These comparisons will allow the team to fine tune and calibrate the instrument, ensuring that every spectral signature gathered by the rover is accurate.

Each element on the Periodic Table has a unique spectral signature. ChemCam scientists will be able to use these spectral fingerprints to decipher the composition of Martian geology, including information about whether Mars rocks ever existed in a watery environment or underwent changes due to interactions with biological organisms.

With regard to Coronation rock (the rock formerly known as N-165), ChemCam’s inaugural target, "at first glance it appears consistent with a basaltic composition," Wiens said.

"What’s more interesting, however, is whether the rock had dust on it or some other kind of surface coating," he said. "ChemCam saw peaks of hydrogen and magnesium during the first shots that we didn’t see in subsequent firings. This could mean the rock surface was coated with dust or some other material."

With Coronation’s analyses complete, the science team had a chance to pick new targets.

"After Coronation, we got to shoot at a group of ugly-looking rocks in the area named ‘Goulburn,’" Wiens said. "That is one of the areas near the rover that was blasted by the thrusters of the landing vehicle, but these rocks were much farther away from the rover than Coronation, providing a bit more of a test for the ChemCam’s laser."

The ChemCam system is one of 10 instruments mounted on the MSL mission’s Curiosity rover—a six-wheeled mobile laboratory that will roam more than 12 miles of the planet’s surface during the course of one Martian year (98 Earth weeks). The system is designed to capture as many as 14,000 observations throughout the mission.

"We are just jubilant," Wiens said. "This mission is absolutely amazing. Everything is working so well. The same applies to our instrument."

ChemCam’s laser, telescope, and camera were provided by the French space agency, CNES, while the spectrometers, electronics, and software were built at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which leads the investigation. The spectrometers were developed with the aid of Ocean Optics, Incorporated, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory assisted with various aspects of development.

The Curiosity science team plans next to take the rover out for a short spin to test out other systems. As the mission progresses, researchers will study the Martian environment in the vicinity of Mount Sharp, a towering peak with a summit nearly three miles above the rover. Mount Sharp appears to contain layers of sedimentary history dating back several billion years. These layers are like pages of a book that could teach researchers much about the geological history of the planet, including whether the Martian environment ever was, or ever may be, suitable for life as we know it.

CURIOSITY LASER READIES FOR MARTIAN TARGETS

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
RIGHT:  Chem Cam Calibration PreLaunch.  PHOTO CREDIT: Los Alamos National Laboratory
ChemCam Laser Sets its Sights on First Martian Target
Rock zapper ready after beaming back images of calibration targets

LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO, August 17, 2012—Members of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover ChemCam team have received the first photos from the instrument’s remote micro imager. The successful capture of ChemCam’s first 10 photos sets the stage for the first test bursts of the instrument’s rock-zapping laser in the near future.
　
"The successful delivery of these photos means we can begin efforts in earnest for the first images of Mars rocks by the ChemCam instrument and the first use of the instrument’s laser," said Los Alamos National Laboratory planetary scientist Roger Wiens, Principal Investigator of the ChemCam Team. "We anticipate these next steps over the weekend."
　
The next tasks for ChemCam—the inaugural laser burst and spectral reading—will help scientists determine the integrity of the ChemCam system and the pointing capability of the rover’s mast, which supports ChemCam’s laser and telescope. Scientists and engineers from NASA’s Curiosity rover mission have selected ChemCam’s first target, a three-inch rock designated N-165 located near the rover.
　
"Rock N-165 looks like your typical Mars rock, about three inches (seven centimeters) wide and it's about 10 feet away," Wiens said. "We are going to hit it with 14 milliJoules of energy 30 times in 10 seconds. It is not only going to be an excellent test of our system, but it should be pretty cool too."
　
The ChemCam system is one of 10 instruments mounted on the MSL mission’s Curiosity rover—a six-wheeled mobile laboratory that will roam more than 12 miles of the planet’s surface during the course of one Martian year (98 Earth weeks).
　
When ChemCam fires its extremely powerful laser pulse, it briefly focuses the energy of a million light bulbs onto an area the size of a pinhead. The laser blast vaporizes a small amount of its target up to seven meters (23 feet) away.
　
The resultant flash of glowing plasma is viewed by the system’s 4.3-inch aperture telescope, which sends the light down an optical fiber to a spectrometer located in the body of the rover. There the colors of the light from the flash are recorded, enabling scientists to determine the elemental composition of the vaporized material. ChemCam also has a high-resolution camera that provides close-up images of an analyzed location. It can image a human hair from seven feet away.
　
The ChemCam system is designed to capture as many as 14,000 observations throughout the mission.
　
The laser, telescope, and camera were provided by the French space agency, CNES, while the spectrometers, electronics, and software were built at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which leads the investigation. The spectrometers were developed with the aid of Ocean Optics, Incorporated, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory assisted with various aspects of development.

INVASION MARS CAUGHT ON CAMERA

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
This is one of the first full-resolution images of the Martian surface from the Navigation cameras on NASA's Curiosity rover, which are located on the rover's "head" or mast. The rim of Gale Crater can be seen in the distance beyond the pebbly ground.
FROM: U.S. LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
ChemCam sends digital ‘thumbs up’
Martian landing area could be a boon for scientific study
LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO, August 8, 2012—Members of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover ChemCam team got a digital thumbs up about the operational readiness of their instrument just hours after the rover landed on Martian soil late Sunday evening.


Los Alamos National Laboratory planetary scientist Roger Wiens, Principal Investigator of the ChemCam Team, confirmed that the instrument sent word to its handlers on Earth that it was alive and healthy.


"Following the fantastic landing of Curiosity on Mars, ChemCam proceeded with an aliveness test within an hour of landing," Wiens announced. "This was essentially the same routine as performed five months earlier in the middle of its cruise (to Mars). All systems are go!"


The aliveness check means that, as far as the international team of scientists is concerned, ChemCam can begin its next task of transmitting photographic images of the rover as a system check.


The ChemCam instrument combines a high-resolution camera powerful enough to view a human hair from seven feet away with a high-power laser that can zap rocks from a distance of as much as 23 feet to determine their composition. If everything goes according to plan, ChemCam could fire its first laser pulses at a Martian rock on Sol 10 or 11 (August 18 or 19).


Because Curiosity’s mission is scheduled to last an entire Martian year, or 98 Earth weeks, the MSL science team—comprised of members from each of the rover’s 10 instruments—is proceeding slowly at first to ensure that the vehicle is ready and able to make its slow road trip on a geological sightseeing trip through Gale crater and the slopes of Mount Sharp.


The rover seems to have landed in a good spot within the crater, Wiens said.
"The idea is that the gravel we’re seeing is alluvium coming down from the rim of the crater," he said. "The alluvium from the rim is potentially more ancient than Mount Sharp," which some have suggested holds a billion years or more of Martian geological history within its strata.


Some members of the ChemCam team see the alluvial pebbles as a unique, drive-by study opportunity. Los Alamos post-doctoral researcher Nina Lanza has previously studied rock varnish on Earth rocks. The dark varnish appears on rocks in arid locations like the desert southwest. The weathered coating, while extremely thin, may provide clues about whether Mars once harbored ancient life.


"Rock varnish on Earth is not clearly understood," Lanza said. "It’s not yet certain whether a biological component is necessary for its formation."


The ability to study extraterrestrial rock varnish, if no indications of bacterial life are present on Mars, could help scientists better understand terrestrial processes by which these varnishes form on rock, or varnishes could serve as a possible confirmatory test that life was once present at locations beyond Earth and Mars.


ChemCam’s tiny bursts of laser energy can gently vaporize the coating bits at a time until it reaches the pristine rock below. The data from ChemCam’s laser and spectrometer can probe the makeup of rock varnish, or indicate to researchers whether the varnish is contaminated with layers of material from other weather-related geological processes.


"ChemCam is the perfect instrument to see these types of subtle chemistry changes through the surface of rocks," Lanza said.

Throughout the Curiosity rover’s mission, ChemCam has the ability to sample thousands of locations on Mars. The instrument is a collaboration between research organizations within the United States and France. More than 45 LANL scientists, students and other personnel comprise the entire ChemCam team.


Photo Caption:
Researchers from LANL and the French Space Agency examine data from the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover from inside the ChemCam Operations Center at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Monday, Aug. 6, 2012, less than a day after the rover landed on Mars. The ChemCam team received signals indicating that the instrument is healthy and all systems are ready to go. Photo Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory/James E. Rickman