NASA’s Curiosity Rover landed in Gale crater in 2012 and continues to make the journey up Mt. Sharp with a sophisticated payload of in situ and remote instruments. The ChemCam instrument is the integration of a remote Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectrometer (LIBS) and a Remote Micro-Imager (RMI). The LIBS spectrometer provides chemical analysis of rocks and soils up to 7 m away from the rover mast while the RMI provides high resolution black and white context images of the samples analyzed by LIBS. The ChemCam LIBS analysis involves ablating material from the sample surface with a focused 1067 nm laser generating an expanding plasma containing electronically excited atoms, ions, and small molecules. The same telescope that focused the ablation laser is used to collect the emission as these electronic excited species relax to lower electronic states. The collected emission is directed into a trio of spectrometers placed in the rover body through a 6 m long optical fiber. These three spectrometers use CCDs to record the emission over most of the 240 to 905 nm spectral range. The ChemCam instrument has made many significant discoveries as it has collected more than 390,000 LIBS spectra from more than 1600 different samples including silicon and alkali rich rocks, the first detection of fluorine on Mars, magnesium-rich ridges, calcium sulfate veins, and manganese-rich rock coatings. The next Mars rover, currently called Mars 2020, referring to the launch year, will include the SuperCam instrument. SuperCam will be capable of making LIBS measurements as is done with ChemCam, determine mineralogy with Raman and passive infrared spectroscopy, distinguish organic and inorganic species with time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy, and provide context images from a color RMI. This paper will discuss the ChemCam and SuperCam instruments and capabilities as well as highlight some of the science completed on Mars with ChemCam and the Curiosity rover.<br/>

Martian chemical and mineralogical analysis with ChemCam and SuperCam

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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