NASA spacecraft persevering on Mars listens to lasers beaming off the rocks
The SuperCam laser is mounted on the rover mast head
Now we know what a laser looks like in another world.
The US Space Agency's Persevering spacecraft has deployed its SuperCam instrument to the surface of Mars for the first time.
The high-intensity light probe can identify rocks from a distance. It's a technology that was also used by NASA's previous rover, Curiosity.
But perseverance has some improvements, including a microphone that actually allows us to hear the laser in action.
This isn't just a nice feature, a gimmick for PR purposes, but it provides additional useful information for scientists.
The sound of hitting rock with a laser reveals information such as the hardness of the targets under investigation.
"If we click on a hard surface, we will not hear the same sound as when we shoot a soft surface," said Naomi Murdoch, of the French Higher National Institute of Aeronautics and Space in Toulouse.
"Take, for example, chalk and marble. These two materials have identical chemical compositions (calcium carbonate), but very different physical properties."
In a media briefing on Wednesday, Dr. Murdoch played three different voices recorded with the SuperCam microphone. One was from the general sound of Mars, the second was from some gust of wind, and the third was an intermittent crackling sound of the laser in action.
They persist in the Jezero Crater crater in Mars on February 18th to search for evidence of past life. The deep bowl is an excellent site for such research because it almost certainly held a lake billions of years ago; And where there was water, there might have been life as well.
SuperCam was developed in partnership between the French and American research teams.
The first rocky target selected for study was called "Maz," which means planet Mars in the Navajo language spoken by Native Americans in the southwestern United States.
Moaz was found, to nobody's surprise, to be basaltic in nature. Basalt is very common on Mars.
It's a rock that contains a lot of magnesium and iron, and it's the kind of thing that forms from lava that cools quickly.
"We don't know yet if this rock itself was igneous, that is, volcanic, or perhaps if it was a sedimentary rock made up of igneous grains that was washed down the river into Lake Jizero and held together," said Roger Wins, Principal Investigator at SuperCam. From the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
"We will have to use more of our technology and study the surrounding area to understand these details further."
Perseverance spent most of the first three weeks on Mars doing the post-landing scans. However, I started driving in a northeast direction.
The immediate target is a helicopter test. The rover brought a small helicopter from the ground with it.
The car is looking for a suitable stretch of terrain where the 2 kg device, called Ingenuity, can be safely placed on the ground. For the time being, the plane dangles under the belly of perseverance.
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