SHERLOC: Spatially-Resolved Detection of Organic and Minerals on Mars
Abstract
The Mars2020 mission is NASA's newest flagship mission to Mars. The rover will land in Jezero Crater, a setting thought to have recorded sedimentary evidence of a past habitable environment. The Mars2020 team will characterize the site including a search for organics and potential biosignatures using its suite of scientific instruments. During the in situ phase of the mission, at least 20 rock and regolith cores consisting of a wide variety of well-documented samples will be collected in sealed containers for eventual return to Earth on a future mission.
The Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) is an instrument mounted on the rover's robotic arm. It combines high spatial resolution imaging with UV resonance Raman and native deep UV fluorescence spectroscopic maps to identify potential biosignatures and address the aqueous history of Mars. Positioned by the robotic arm to investigate rock and regolith targets, a deep UV laser (248.6 nm) generates characteristic Raman and fluorescence photons within a 100 micron laser spot. With the combination of deep UV fluorescence and deep UV Raman scattering, SHERLOC enables non-destructive, sub-picogram detection of organics and their spatial correlation to astrobiologically-relevant minerals, such as those associated with wet environments (e.g., carbonates, nitrates, phosphates, sulfates, etc.). These spatially correlated organic and mineral maps are an important component in differentiating between potential biogenicity, abiogenic formation, and meteoric contributions to Martian geologic materials. SHERLOC couples fine-scale imaging (10 um/pixel) with spectral maps that characterize organic, chemical, and mineral associations over scales that match petrographic-scale rock textures and structures (e.g., layers, veins, vugs), features that may have harbored and preserved microbial biosignatures. Finally, SHERLOC spectra can be combined with other measurements made by other payload elements, including remote mineralogical and elemental analysis enabled by SuperCam, and elemental abundances measured by PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry) an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. We will present the current capabilities as demonstrated during pre-launch testing.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.P43C3487B
- Keywords:
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- 6008 Composition;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: COMETS AND SMALL BODIES;
- 6045 Physics and chemistry of materials;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: COMETS AND SMALL BODIES;
- 6207 Comparative planetology;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS;
- 5410 Composition;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLID SURFACE PLANETS