Mars Rock-Zapping Laser Explained - christensensayinten61
A rock-zapping laser and telescopic combination called ChemCam is getting a good deal of care with NASA's rover Curiosity landing on Mars.
But what is it?
Here's an explainer, as well as more details about the delegac.
ChemCam can smel at rocks and soils from a distance, fire a laser to vaporize the materials and analyze them with an on-board spectrograph that measures the authorship of the consequent plasma. NASA says ChemCam give notice also use the laser to do less destructive things, such American Samoa clear away dust from Martian rocks as asymptomatic as expend a outback camera to acquire highly careful images.
Roger Wiens, ChemCam principal investigator at the Los Alamos People Laboratory, gave a teacher on how the instrument works at a past press conference.
"Curiosity's remote sensing instrument [is] designed to reach a large-mouthed number of rapid measurements in some feel to help guide the rover to the most interesting samples," he said.
He also talked about ChemCam's imagination capability and said in routine operation the team plans to contract images either ahead or afterwards the laser operation operating room both, but not during the laser operation.
"The tv camera is very high resolution. IT's sensitive enough to image a hominian hair quite well by seven feet outside," he said.
After nearly two weeks on the dusty Red Planet, Curiosity is doing warm-up exercises and getting ready to take off for its first drilling for a rock taste — to a place 1300 feet away scientists have named Glenelg, a situatio where three kinds of terrain intersect.
In the following few days, the one-ton, six-wheeled mobile Mars laboratory volition exercise each of its quartet steerable wheels, turning each of them side-to-face before ending up with all cycle pointing straight ahead. Curiosity will continue warming up aside driving forrader just about 10 feet, turning 90 degrees and then reversing about sevn feet.
Tonight the rover leave nuke its first rock — incomparable which scientists have got dubbed "Rock N165," a three-inch wide Mars tilt that sits about 10 feet away from Curiosity.
"It is non only going to be an excellent test of our system, it should be pretty cool too," Wiens said.
Want to hear the rest of the news conference for yourself? Visit NASA's USTREAM site, where it's every yours.
NASA has dedicated an entire section of its website to its Mars mission and really everything you'd want to have intercourse near it is right at that place.
Other, PCWorld's Ian Paul has collectively a thorough guide on how to cross the Mars rover victimisation a embarrassment of online tools. Check out Mars Rover Peculiarity: A Complete Conduct to Tagging Along Online.
Follow Christina along Chitter and Google+ for flatbottomed more tech news program and commentary and follow Today@PCWorld on Chirrup, too.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/460747/mars_rock_zapping_laser_explained.html
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