April 29 (Fri) Graduate Seminar / Luther Beegle, PhD

Exploring Mars:

A year in Jezero Crater with the Perseverance rover.

The Mars2020 mission is NASA’s latest flagship mission to Mars. The spacecraft launched in July 2020, and landed in Jezero crater on February 18, 2021 at the Octavia E. Butler Landing site. The rocks and sediments of Jezero crater are anticipated to have preserved records of past, potentially habitable environments. The mission is characterizing these environments by analyzing outcrop geochemistry, characterizing the presence and nature of organic molecules, and in environments with high preservation potential, searching for potential biosignatures.

    The Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) is a robotic arm mounted instrument that combines microscopic imaging, native fluorescence and Raman spectroscopy to better understand the mineral and chemical makeup of rocks on the Martian surface. Native fluorescence emissions from aromatic organic species allow for detection and classification of aromatic organic molecules, whereas Raman scattered photons from molecules allow identification of functional groups of organics, chemicals, and minerals. These signatures are obtained on a 100 micron spatial scale and collocated to images so textures, minerals and chemicals can all be compared SHERLOC is a robotic arm mounted instrument. SHERLOC combines imaging with UV resonance Raman and native deep UV fluorescence spectroscopy to identify potential biosignatures and understand the aqueous history of the Jezero Region. WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering), a reflight of the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the Curiosity rover is capable of color imaging over a wide range of resolutions (from infinity to 13.1 micron/pixel) and is used for both science and engineering. A second imager, the Autofocusing Contextual Imager (ACI), produces grayscale images at 10.1 micron/pixel resolution in a 48 mm range.

We have analyzed 3 natural surfaces, and 6 abraded rock patches created during the Crater Floor Campaign within Jezero crater. In each of these samples, we have identified fluorescence features that are likely aromatic organics native to the rock interiors. We will be discussing the results from all of these samples during this talk.

Reference

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/instruments/sherloc/