Spring Break
Hopkins instrument maps Martian surface composition
Issue date: 10/2/08
In 2007, the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) began the task of observing our closest planetary neighbor, Mars, with the help of one serious piece of machinery: the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
One of the key devices on MRO, the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), created by the Applied Physics Laboratory at Hopkins, is beaming back a detailed map of the Martian surface.
"All of us involved in CRISM are very excited to be working on it, because it's been providing previously unseen evidence [that] Mars had liquid water in its past and might have supported life," APL scientist Scott Murchie said.
Mars, of course, is of particular interest to scientists, as it provides an analog for Earth, giving scientists a glimpse of a fate that might one day befall our own planet.
In fact, there is a great amount of debate over whether Mars was once a lush, aquatic planet like Earth currently is, in contrast to its current frigid, dusty state.
Part of the CRISM instrument's mission - along with other orbiting and ground-based spacecrafts - is to find evidence of water, past or present, on the Red Planet.
The target of CRISM's observations are very distinctive reflective patterns caused by sunlight glancing off of water trapped in certain minerals on Mars's surface.
The minerals that CRISM is trying to detect are finicky and will not form unless water exists, or has existed, in the environment.
CRISM has been doing a pretty fantastic job so far; In less than a year, the database of CRISM images has already topped the 4,000 mark and is steadily creeping towards an even more impressive library.
Scientists are patching together these spectroscopic images to create a detailed map of the chemical makeup of Mars. This map will be useful in future missions to the planet, as well as in finding ancient areas of water.
"In the long term, our targeted observations are increasingly focusing on regions of the planet with the best exposures of mineral layered in Mars's crust, as seen by the multispectral survey and corroborated by targeted observations," Murchie said.
CRISM's mission is not all tourism and photography, though; It is also tasked with finding precisely the right place for the Mars Science Library to start roving around on Mars itself.
This new mission, the next in NASA's Mars lander series, will be searching for traces of organic molecules on Mars's surface, so it's important to pick out the right research area.
One of the key devices on MRO, the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), created by the Applied Physics Laboratory at Hopkins, is beaming back a detailed map of the Martian surface.
"All of us involved in CRISM are very excited to be working on it, because it's been providing previously unseen evidence [that] Mars had liquid water in its past and might have supported life," APL scientist Scott Murchie said.
Mars, of course, is of particular interest to scientists, as it provides an analog for Earth, giving scientists a glimpse of a fate that might one day befall our own planet.
In fact, there is a great amount of debate over whether Mars was once a lush, aquatic planet like Earth currently is, in contrast to its current frigid, dusty state.
Part of the CRISM instrument's mission - along with other orbiting and ground-based spacecrafts - is to find evidence of water, past or present, on the Red Planet.
The target of CRISM's observations are very distinctive reflective patterns caused by sunlight glancing off of water trapped in certain minerals on Mars's surface.
The minerals that CRISM is trying to detect are finicky and will not form unless water exists, or has existed, in the environment.
CRISM has been doing a pretty fantastic job so far; In less than a year, the database of CRISM images has already topped the 4,000 mark and is steadily creeping towards an even more impressive library.
Scientists are patching together these spectroscopic images to create a detailed map of the chemical makeup of Mars. This map will be useful in future missions to the planet, as well as in finding ancient areas of water.
"In the long term, our targeted observations are increasingly focusing on regions of the planet with the best exposures of mineral layered in Mars's crust, as seen by the multispectral survey and corroborated by targeted observations," Murchie said.
CRISM's mission is not all tourism and photography, though; It is also tasked with finding precisely the right place for the Mars Science Library to start roving around on Mars itself.
This new mission, the next in NASA's Mars lander series, will be searching for traces of organic molecules on Mars's surface, so it's important to pick out the right research area.
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