Curiosity’s Laser Leaves Its Mark

Before-and-after images from Curiosity’s ChemCam  micro-imager show holes left by its million-watt laser (NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP/LPGN/CNRS)

PEWPEWPEWPEWPEW! Curiosity’s head-mounted ChemCam did a little target practice on August 25, blasting millimeter-sized holes in a soil sample named “Beechey” in order to acquire spectrographic data from the resulting plasma glow. The neat line of holes is called a five-by-one raster, and was made from a distance of about 11.5 feet (3.5 meters).

Sorry Obi-Wan, but Curiosity’s blaster is neither clumsy nor random!

Mounted to Curiosity’s “head”, just above its Mastcam camera “eyes”, ChemCam combines a powerful laser with a telescope and spectrometer that can analyze the light emitted by zapped materials, thereby determining with unprecedented precision what Mars is really made of.

Read: Take a Look Through Curiosity’s ChemCam

For five billionths of a second the laser focuses a million watts of energy onto a specific point. Each of the 5 holes seen on Beechey are the result of 50 laser hits. 2 to 4 millimeters in diameter, the holes are much larger than the laser point itself, which is only .43 millimeters wide at that distance.

ChemCam’s laser allows Curiosity to zap and examine targets up to 23 feet (7 meters) away. Credit: J-L. Lacour/CEA/French Space Agency (CNES)

“ChemCam is designed to look for lighter elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, all of which are crucial for life,” said Roger Wiens, principal investigator of the ChemCam team. “The system can provide immediate, unambiguous detection of water from frost or other sources on the surface as well as carbon – a basic building block of life as well as a possible byproduct of life. This makes the ChemCam a vital component of Curiosity’s mission.”

Visit the official ChemCam site for more information.

Jason Major

A graphic designer in Rhode Island, Jason writes about space exploration on his blog Lights In The Dark, Discovery News, and, of course, here on Universe Today. Ad astra!

Recent Posts

Missed the Mars Livestream? Here's the Video

When a mission to Mars reaches 20 years of service, that’s definitely reason to celebrate.…

37 mins ago

JWST Shows How the Early Universe Was Furiously Forming Stars

We can gaze out into regions in our neighbourhood of the Milky Way and find…

1 hour ago

SLS Could Launch a Sample Return Mission to Phobos and Deimos

NASA's next colossal rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), recently had its first successful flight…

7 hours ago

20 Years of Mars Express Images Helped Build This Mosaic of the Red Planet

To mark the 20th anniversary of the Mars Express mission, the ESA has released a…

22 hours ago

There Are Hundreds of Mysterious Filaments at the Center of the Milky Way

Several million years ago, the core of our galaxy experienced a powerful event. It blew…

1 day ago

JWST Sees Organic Molecules Ludicrously Far Away

When astronomers used the JWST to look at a galaxy more than 12 billion light…

1 day ago