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Perseverance ‘SuperCam’ begins hunt for past life on Mars
PARIS, March 11, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – The bundle of instruments known as
SuperCam on board the Perseverance Mars rover has collected its first samples
in the hunt for past life on the Red Planet, mission scientists said
Wednesday.
The return to Earth years from now of the rocks and soil it retrieves “will
give scientists the Holy Grail of planetary exploration,” Jean-Yves le Gall,
president of France’s National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), which mostly
built the mobile observatory, commented via a YouTube broadcast.
These “pieces of Mars”, he said, may “finally answer this fascinating and
fundamental question: was there ever life elsewhere than Earth?”
After seven months in space, NASA’s Perseverance rover gently set down on
Martian soil last month and sent back black-and-white images revealing the
rocky fields of Jezero Crater, just north of the Mars equator.
“The critical component of this astrobiology mission is SuperCam,” said
Thomas Zurbuchen, deputy head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
Mounted on the rover’s mast, the shoebox-sized gizmo is packed with
spectrometers, a laser, and an audio recording device to analyse the
chemistry, mineralogy and molecular composition of Mars’ famously red
surface.
SuperCam’s laser can zap objects smaller than a pencil point from as far
away as seven metres (20 feet), and enables the observation of spots beyond
the reach of the rover’s robotic arm.
“The laser is uniquely capable of remotely clearing away surface dust,
giving all of its instruments a clear view of the targets,” said Roger Wiens,
an engineer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and SuperCam
principal investigator.
The mission suffered a serious mishap before liftoff, revealed LANL’s Scott
Robinson, who said more than 500 engineers and scientists contributed to the
project.
“The mast unit optics were destroyed in a freak accident just four months
before delivery,” he explained. “The team scambled to pull together spare
parts to rebuild the telescope from scratch.”
The accident turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
– A ‘freak accident’ –
In reassembling the unit, engineers discovered what Robinson described as a
“Hubble-like” flaw in the original mirror.
Shortly after the Hubble Space Telescope’s launch in 1990, operators
realised that the observatory’s primary mirror had an aberration — later
corrected — that affected the clarity of images.
Scientists believe that around 3.5 billion years ago the crater in which
Perseverance landed was home to a river that flowed into a deep lake,
depositing sediment in a fan-shaped delta.
The rover is tasked with collecting more than two dozen rock and soil
samples in sealed tubes, to be sent back to Earth sometime in the 2030s for
analysis.
About the size and weight of an SUV, Perseverance is equipped with a two-
meter (seven-foot) robotic arm, 19 cameras, two microphones as well as other
cutting-edge instruments.
A small helicopter drone tucked under its belly will attempt the first
powered flight on another planet in a few weeks’ time.
One instrument on board is designed to make oxygen from Mars’ primarily
carbon dioxide atmosphere, something that would greatly facilitate human
habitation.
Perseverance is the fifth rover to set wheels down on Mars, all of them
from NASA. The feat was first accomplished in 1997.
Its core mission lasts just over two years, but the rover could remain
operational well beyond that.
BSS/AFP/FI/0844 hrs