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.
Mars Curiosity rover took a panorama of this rock cliff during its trip across Mount…
In this 2D image of nebulae in the Orion Molecular Complex, the submillimetre-wavelength glow of…
It might be hard to fathom now, but the human exploration of the solar system…
A team of Chinese researchers has proposed a new mission to find Earth-like planets in…
New research led by the USRA has found a possible explanation for planet-wide Martian dust…
Can watching a video give you motion sickness? If so, a commercial launch company called…