In 2024, NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance collected an uncommon rock pattern. The rock, named Sapphire Canyon, options white, leopardlike spots with black borders inside a pink mudstone and may maintain clues about sources of natural molecules inside Mars.
Right here on Earth, in Assessment of Scientific Devices, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Know-how used a method known as optical photothermal infrared spectroscopy (O-PTIR) to review a visually related rock. They wished to find out if O-PTIR could be utilized to the Sapphire Canyon pattern when it’s finally introduced right here for research.
O-PTIR makes use of two lasers to review a fabric: The primary heats up the fabric and causes small thermal vibrations on its floor proportional to the laser’s wavelength, and the second measures the extent of those modifications. Collectively, this creates the fabric’s distinctive chemical fingerprint.
The researchers examined O-PTIR on a basalt rock with darkish inclusions of comparable dimension to the Sapphire Canyon pattern’s — which, in distinction to Perseverance’s subtle pattern choice course of, creator Nicholas Heinz discovered purely by coincidence.
“I used to be mountaineering in Arizona, in Sedona, after I noticed this rock that simply did not appear to be it belonged,” he stated. “I put it in my backpack and introduced it again to have a look at.”
They aimed to see if O-PTIR might differentiate between the rock’s major materials and its darkish inclusions and located it was extraordinarily efficient due to the improved spatial decision of O-PTIR. Furthermore, O-PTIR is a fast method. Every spectrum could be collected in minutes, permitting scientists to go in with a extra delicate method to review potential areas of curiosity recognized in additional element, corresponding to areas containing organics.
“I hope this functionality shall be thought of for any future materials returned from Mars, an asteroid, or every other planetary floor,” stated Heinz.
The staff’s O-PTIR capabilities are the one of their variety obtainable at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and have already been utilized by different NASA missions — in 2024, they helped affirm the cleanliness of Europa Clipper, a mission to review certainly one of Jupiter’s moons, previous to its launch. Heinz stated that now that they’ve proven its further advantages in functions associated to Mars samples, and geology extra extensively, they’re working with NASA’s Mars science staff to check the algal microfossils usually used as Mars analogs for the rovers.
