Sciences Dean Helps NASA's Rover Unlock the Secrets of Mars
04/16/2024
By Edwin L. Aguirre
How did Mars form? Did liquid water exist long enough on the Martian surface to potentially support the development of microbial life?
These are just some of the questions that NASA hopes to answer as its most sophisticated robotic rover, named “Perseverance,” explores the red planet.
Kennedy College of Sciences Dean and Physics Prof. Noureddine Melikechi is a member of the science team for SuperCam, one of the main instruments onboard Perseverance that is used to conduct laser experiments on the Martian surface.
The SUV-sized rover successfully landed in 2021 inside Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide, dried-up impact basin located in the Martian northern hemisphere. Around 3.5 billion years ago, a river flowed into the crater, depositing mud, sand, gravel and other sediments.
Scientists believe the crater’s ancient deposits could have accumulated and preserved organic com pounds and other potential evidence of microbial life.
SuperCam uses a technique called laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, or LIBS, to examine the chemical and mineral composition of Martian rocks and soils by zapping them with a powerful infrared laser.
It fires intense laser pulses at distant rocks, boulders or sediments, heating a spot on them to around 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit. A spectrometer records the light emitted by the vaporized cloud of materials. The data is then transmitted to Earth for analysis. SuperCam has already helped Perseverance to make some ground breaking discoveries. An analysis of the instrument’s data revealed that massive flash floods once inundated Mars. SuperCam also showed that instead of sedimen tary rocks, which one would expect from river delta and lakebed deposits, Jezero Crater’s rocks are largely made up of igneous rocks, which are formed from mol ten volcanic material. Melikechi co-authored a paper in the journal Science Advances last year that announced the volcanic history of Jezero Crater.
In addition to Melikechi, the SuperCam science team includes dozens of researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the U.S. Geological Survey, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, Johns Hopkins University and other institutions.