The perseverance of the NASA rover travels Mars for science

In addition to forming samples of rock nucleus, the scientific team has made a path in the rocks to give meaning to scientific evidence hiding just below the surface.

On June 3, the perseverance of NASA, Mars Rover, requested part of a rocky surface, stunned the resulting debris, then launched to study its immaculate interior with a series of instruments designed to determine its mineralogical makeup and its geological origin. “Kenmore”, nicknamed by the Rover Sciences team, is the 30th Martian Rock that perseverance has submitted to an in -depth examination, starting with the drilling of a two -inch abrasion patch (5 centimeters).

“Kenmore was a strange and not very cooperative rock,” said the assistant scientist of the Perseverance project, Ken Farley from Caltech to Pasadena, California. “Visually, it looked good – the kind of rock on which we could get a good abrasion and perhaps if science was right, perform a collection of samples. But during abrasion, it vibrated everywhere and small pieces separated. Fortunately, we managed to go far below the surface to go ahead with an analysis.”

The scientific team wants to go below the altered and dusty surface of Mars Rocks to see important details on the composition and the history of a rock. Grider an abrasion patch also creates a flat surface which allows the scientific instruments of Perseverance to get closer and get closer to the rock.

Nasa March Exploration RoversSpirit and opportunity, everyone wore a diamond point mill called the Rock abrasion tool (Rat) which turned to 3,000 revolutions per minute while the rover robotic arm pushed it deeper into the rock. Two metal brushes then swept away the debris or residues resulting away. The agency Curiosity Rover transports a dust elimination tool, whose wire hairs sweep the dust on the rock surface before the rover is angry in the rock. PerseveranceAs for him, is based on a specially designed abrasive bit, and it erases residues with a device that exceeds metal brushes: the gas or GDRT moving tool.

“We use the GDRT of perseverance to pull a puff of 12 pounds per inch (about 83 kilopascals) from nitrogen with residues and dust that cover a freshly abrasive rock,” said Kaplan, robotic engineer in the NASA jet laboratory in southern California. “Five puffs out of abrasion – one to evacuate the tanks and four to clear abrasion. And the GDRT has a long way to go. Since landing with Jezero crater over four years ago, we inflated 169 times. There are around 800 puffs in the tank.” The GDRT offers a key advantage compared to a brushing approach: it avoids all terrestrial contaminants which could be on a brush to climb on the Martian rock.

After having collected data on abraded surfaces more than 30 times, the Rover team has a collection of in situ science (studying something in its place or original position). After GDRT removed the residues, Watson’s imaging (topographic sensor wide angle of the rover for operations and engineering) (which, like GDRT, is at the end of the rover arm) plunges for close -up photos. Then, from its high point of view on the Rover mast, Supercam Take thousands of individual laser pulses, each time using a spectrometer to determine the composition of the plume of microscopic equipment released after each ZAP. Supercam also uses a different spectrometer to analyze visible and infrared light that bounces materials in the abrasing area.

“Supercam has made observations in the abrasion patch and powdered residues next to the patch,” said Supercam team and “Crater Rim” campaign Science Ilded, Cathy Quantin-Nataf of the University of Lyon in France. “The residues have shown us that this rock contains clay minerals, which contain water in the form of hydroxide molecules linked to iron and magnesium – relatively typical of the ancient clay minerals in March. Abrasion spectra gave us the chemical composition of the rock, showing improvements in iron and magnesium. ”

Later, the Sherloc (Analysis of habitable environments with Raman and Luminescence for organic products and chemicals) and Pixl (Planetary instrument for X -ray lithochemistry) The instruments also took a crack in Kenmore. In addition to supporting Supercam’s discoveries that the rock contained clay, they detected the feldspath (the mineral which makes a large part of the moon brilliantly brilliant in the sun). The PIXL instrument also detected a manganese hydroxide mineral in abrasion – the first time that this type of equipment has been identified during the mission.