P11A-3753:
Remote Geochemical and Mineralogical Analysis with SuperCam on the Mars 2020 Rover and on Earth
Monday, 15 December 2014
Samuel M Clegg1, Roger C Wiens2, Sylvestre Maurice3, Olivier Gasnault4, Olivier Forni3, Shiv K Sharma5, Anupam K Misra6, Fernando Rull7 and Jeffrey Roy Johnson8, (1)Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, United States, (2)Space Science and Applications, Los Alamos, NM, United States, (3)IRAP, Toulouse, France, (4)Universite de Toulouse, Toulouse Cedex 4, France, (5)Univ Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, United States, (6)Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, Honolulu, HI, United States, (7)Universidad de Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain, (8)Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, United States
Abstract:
The SuperCam instrument selected for the Mars 2020 rover is the integration of remote Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), Raman spectroscopy, Time-Resolved Fluorescence, Visible and Infrared (VISIR) Reflectance Spectroscopy, and a color Remote Micro-Imager (RMI). The SuperCam instrument is based on the ChemCam architecture that includes a 1064 nm Nd:YAG laser and telescope in the mast and a suite of three spectrometers in the body connected by an optical fiber. The telescope on the mast will be used to focus the 1064 nm laser and generate a LIBS plasma from which the elemental composition will be determined up to a 7 m standoff distance. Some of the 1064 nm laser will be directed through a doubling crystal to produce 532 nm light for Raman mineralogical analysis out to 12 m from the mast. The ChemCam visible and near infrared (VNIR) spectrometer will be replaced with a transmission spectrometer and intensified charge coupled device (ICCD) that is designed to maximize the Raman mineralogical sensitivity. This transmission spectrometer and ICCD was also designed to collect time-resolved fluorescence spectra that can distinguish short lived organic fluorescence from long lived inorganic signatures. The SuperCam instrument also includes a Visible and Infrared (VISIR) Reflectance Spectrometer (400 – 900 nm, 1.3 – 2.6 µm) designed to remotely detect minerals. Finally, the ChemCam black and white RMI that is integrated into the telescope will be replaced with a color RMI with the same spatial resolution to provide context images of the samples probed with the SuperCam spectrometers. In this paper, some of the geochemical and mineralogical laboratory tests will be presented to highlight the SuperCam capabilities under both terrestrial and Mars conditions.
