SHERLOC: Scanning habitable environments with Raman & luminescence for organics & chemicals

Author

Beegle, Luther ; Bhartia, Rohit ; White, Mary ; DeFlores, Lauren ; Abbey, William ; Yen-Hung Wu ; Cameron, Bruce ; Moore, James ; Fries, Marc ; Burton, Aaron ; Edgett, Kenneth S. ; Ravine, Michael A. ; Hug, William ; Reid, Ray ; Nelson, Tony ; Clegg, Sam

Author_Institution

Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA

fYear

2015

fDate

7-14 March 2015

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

11

Abstract

SHERLOC is an arm-mounted fluorescence and Raman spectrometer that was recently selected to be part of the payload for the next proposed NASA rover mission to Mars, scheduled for launch in 2020. SHERLOC enables non-contact, spatially resolved, high sensitivity detection and characterization of organics and minerals on the Martian surface. The investigation goals are to assess past aqueous history, detect the presence and preservation potential of biosignatures, and support the selection of samples for caching and potential return to Earth.

Keywords

Mars; planetary rovers; planetary surfaces; Mars; Martian surface; NASA rover mission; SHERLOC; arm-mounted Raman spectrometer; arm-mounted fluorescence spectrometer; high sensitivity detection; noncontact detection; spatially resolved detection; Fluorescence; Instruments; Laser excitation; Mars; Minerals; Surface morphology;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Aerospace Conference, 2015 IEEE

Conference_Location

Big Sky, MT

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-5379-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/AERO.2015.7119105

Filename

7119105