Mathematics – Logic
Scientific paper
Dec 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007agufm.p31c0548s&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007, abstract #P31C-0548
Mathematics
Logic
3694 Instruments And Techniques, 5410 Composition (1060, 3672), 5494 Instruments And Techniques
Scientific paper
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is the next major landed Mars mission scheduled for Launch in 2009. MSL is primarily a geological mission intended to assess if past environments on Mars could have supported life. An X-ray diffraction instrument called CheMin is part of the MSL rover science payload. CheMin was developed and is managed by NASA Ames Research Center and the flight system is currently being built at JPL. A miniature portable instrument was developed for NASA ARC by inXitu, Inc. (California) to support the CheMin Science Team with a tool that can easily be deployed on terrestrial Mars analog terrains. The instrument will be used to practice with field mineralogical analysis in preparation for the operational phase of the mission. The instrument is called mini-CheMin for its reduced size (45x32x12cm) and weight (14.5kg) compared to previous CheMin prototypes. Mini-CheMin was deployed in Spitsbergen in August 2007 as part of the science payload of the Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition (AMASE). The instrument was used for a variety of field tests, including two rover operation simulations. XRD data of sufficient quality for mineral identification and semi-quantitative analysis could be obtained in as little as a few minutes. XRF data, through limited in energy range to 3 - 8 keV, was very useful in restricting the search space for mineral identification with complex samples. In one of the deployment sites, a carbonate rich hot spring, a sample collected and analyzed in situ was found to be composed of mainly calcite with a minor amount of monohydrocalcite. Samples collected from this site and later analyzed with mini-CheMin onboard the expedition ship did not show any monohydrocalcite, the phase having been dehydrated to calcite by conventional laboratory sample preparation methods. This illustrates the benefit of in situ field mineralogical analysis for which samples can be analyzed in their pristine mineralogical makeup.
Amundsen H.
Blake David F.
Brunner W.
Midtkandal I.
Sarrazin P. C.
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