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Posted by baalke on June 26, 2007, 12:15 pm
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http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/home.story/story_id/10778
Mars Rover Laser Tool Ready for Testing
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Contact: Nancy Ambrosiano, nwa@lanl.gov, (505) 667-0471
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., June 21, 2007 -- Los Alamos ChemCam to vaporize
rocks
on Mars to determine composition
Mars mission Job One: Get there. Job Two: Find rocks and zap them with
your laser tool. Now learn the nature of the debris by
spectrographically analyzing the ensuing dust and fragments. It's
every
kid's dream, vaporizing pebbles on other planets, and thanks to a team
at Los Alamos National Laboratory, it's going to happen.
When the JPL-NASA Mars Science Laboratory rover launches in 2009, it
will carry this combination laser-telescope unit and enable the
gadget-packed rover to know a great deal about rocks in its general
vicinity. The ChemCam package includes a mast unit, projecting above
the
rover with a laser and telescope, and a body unit, the brains of the
beast, with three spectrographs and the instrument controls.
The engineering model of ChemCam's mast unit, fresh from Thales Laser
and Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements (CESR) in France, is
undergoing rigorous testing at Los Alamos. A team of six French
experts
is checking out the mast unit this week and making sure that it is
properly connected with the rest of the instrument, built at Los
Alamos.
This fall the entire instrument will be shipped to the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, where more tests will take place and additional equipment
will be added.
Video and still images of the ChemCam mast unit firing its laser
in the laboratory are available from the Los Alamos Communications
Office.
In addition, see
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/sc_instru_chemcam.html and
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ online.
"We're pioneering a new technique for exploring Mars. It's really
exciting to see the whole thing come together," said Roger Wiens,
project lead and a Los Alamos scientist.
The ChemCam laser emits very short pulses of 7 nanoseconds, through a
small telescope that focuses the beam to a spot where the power
density
exceeds 10 megawatts per square millimeter, producing a plasma of
vaporized material from the target rock. The unit operates on targets
at
distances between 4 and 30 feet. The unit also contains a camera to
take
extreme close-up pictures of the targets to show geologic context for
each sample. The telescope and electronics were built by CESR, a
research institute in Toulouse, France. The mast unit was funded by
CNES, the French Space Agency. The full ChemCam flight model will be
delivered to JPL in Spring of 2008.
Scheduled to launch in the fall of 2009, Mars Science Laboratory is
part
of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic
exploration of the red planet. Mars Science Laboratory is a rover that
will assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment
able to support microbial life. In other words, its mission is to
determine the planet's habitability.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a multidisciplinary research
institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national
security.
The Laboratory is operated by a team composed of Bechtel National, the
University of California, BWX Technologies, and Washington Group
International for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security
Administration.
Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and
reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to
reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems
related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health and global
security concerns.
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