Engineers set up the SuperCam instrument on the Mars 2020 rover within the Spacecraft Meeting Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Not solely did the Mars 2020 Rover just lately rating a set of wheels and legs, it now sports activities a brilliant instrument the geniuses at NASA will use to seek for proof of previous life on Mars. Engineers on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, fitted the brand new rover, which can also be but to obtain its official identify, with the SuperCam Mast Unit early final week, NASA confirmed Tuesday.
What does the SuperCam do? It is the next-generation model of the ChemCam instrument put in on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover, which is at present going about making its personal discoveries on the Purple Planet. In accordance with NASA, the instrument’s digicam, laser and spectrometers “can determine the chemical and mineral make-up of targets as small as a pencil level from a distance of greater than 20 toes (6 meters).”
NASA intends to place the SuperCam to good use inspecting Martian rocks and soil, particularly to hunt out natural compounds that could possibly be associated to previous life on Mars.
A joint effort between the US, France and Spain, the instrument has come a great distance since inception.
“SuperCam has come a great distance from being a daring and bold thought to an precise instrument,” mentioned Sylvestre Maurice, the SuperCam deputy principal investigator on the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie in Toulouse, France. “Whereas it nonetheless has an extended strategy to go – all the best way to Mars – it is a nice day for not solely SuperCam however the superb consortium that put it collectively.”
NASA plans to launch the Mars 2020 Rover in, you guessed it, 2020. Its supposed touchdown level, after a 12 months of house journey, is on the Purple Planet’s Jezero Crater.
