Mars 2020 Rover Will get a Tremendous Instrument

From NASA

On this picture taken June 25, 2019, engineers set up the SuperCam instrument on Mars 2020’s rover. This picture was taken within the Spacecraft Meeting Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have put in the SuperCam Mast Unit onto the Mars 2020 rover. The instrument’s digicam, laser and spectrometers can determine the chemical and mineral make-up of targets as small as a pencil level from a distance of greater than 20 toes (6 meters).

SuperCam is a next-generation model of the ChemCam instrument working on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. It has been developed collectively within the U.S., France and Spain. As soon as France delivered the final piece of flight , the instrument was totally built-in on the Mars 2020 rover on June 25, 2019, within the Spacecraft Meeting Facility’s Excessive Bay 1 clear room at JPL.

“SuperCam has come a good distance from being a daring and bold concept to an precise instrument,” mentioned Sylvestre Maurice, the SuperCam deputy principal investigator on the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie in Toulouse, France. “Whereas it nonetheless has a protracted solution to go — all the way in which to Mars — it is a nice day for not solely SuperCam however the superb consortium that put it collectively.”

Mars 2020 scientists will use SuperCam to look at Martian rocks and soil, searching for natural compounds that could possibly be associated to previous life on Mars.

“SuperCam’s rock-zapping laser permits scientists to research the chemical composition of its targets,” mentioned Soren Madsen, the payload improvement supervisor at JPL. “It lets the Mars 2020 rover conduct its cutting-edge science from a distance.”

Additionally to be put in within the subsequent few weeks is Mars 2020’s Pattern Caching System, which incorporates 17 separate motors and can accumulate samples of Martian rock and soil that will probably be left on the floor of Mars for return to Earth by a future mission.

Mars 2020 will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Drive Station in Florida in July of 2020. It’s going to land at Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021.

NASA will use Mars 2020 and different missions, together with to the Moon, to arrange for human exploration of the Purple Planet. The company plans to ascertain a sustained human presence on and across the Moon by 2028 by means of NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration plans.

SuperCam is led by Los Alamos Nationwide Laboratory in New Mexico, the place the instrument’s Physique Unit was developed. That a part of the instrument was put in within the physique of the rover in Might and contains a number of spectrometers, management electronics and software program. The Mast Unit was constructed with contributions from quite a few educational laboratories in France, led by the French area company Centre Nationwide d’Études Spatiales, and contains the high-powered laser, a telescope, a digicam, an infrared spectrometer and a microphone. Calibration targets on the rover deck are offered by Spain’s College of Valladolid.

JPL is constructing and can handle operations of the Mars 2020 rover for the NASA Science Mission Directorate on the company’s headquarters in Washington.

If you wish to ship your identify to Mars with NASA’s 2020 mission, you are able to do so till Sept. 30, 2019. Add your identify to the checklist and procure a memento boarding cross to Mars right here:

https://go.nasa.gov/Mars2020Move

For extra details about the mission, go to:

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

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