Hi everyone. My name is Railyn Stokes and I work for the USGS
Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona and today
I'm joined by a colleague of mine, Ryan Anderson. Hi
everyone. I'm Ryan. Ryan is a planetary scientist at USGS
Astrogeology. He is currently working on the ChemCam
Instrument team on the Curiosity Rover Mission
exploring Gale Crater. He's also a member of the Super Cam
instrument team for the Perseverance is currently on
its way to Jezero Crater Mars. So today, we're really excited
that you joined us, Ryan. We have a couple of questions for
you leading up to the landing of Perseverance. Okay. So our
first question can you tell us about the SuperCam instrument
on Perseverance? Yeah, so SuperCam is uh as they might
indicate. It's the successor of ChemCam so ChemCam is an instrument on
curiosity that uses a laser to zap rocks at a distance and it
makes a little tiny spark and then it collects the light from
that spark and you can use that to tell what the rock is made
of. SuperCam is similar and it has the same capability to
zap the rocks, but it also has a different mode where it
shines the laser light on the rock and it can use that to
measure what minerals are there rather than what atoms are
there. So you can tell the mineralogy and the chemistry with
one instrument. SuperCam also does infrared spectroscopy and
has a color camera instead of black and white camera. So it's
sort of a Swiss army knife of an instrument. It can tell you
all sorts of things and it's a nice way to explore our
surroundings from a distance before getting up close and
doing more with the rover with the arm and more complicated
things. Well, it does sound like it was rightfully named.
Yes. So can you summarize some of the biggest discoveries that
ChemCam has made during Curiosity's mission so far and how they've
changed our understanding of Mars? Yeah. So ChemCam is uh it's a
really useful instrument because instead of having to
drive the rover over and reach out the arm and spend overnight
or a day drilling or measuring in you know right up close, we
can zap rocks from a distance. We can zap several rocks each
day and each rock we zap we hit you know ten to sixteen
points on it and each point we get thirty spectra so it
brings a ton of data in and it's a really great way to
explore the rover surroundings get a quick look at the
chemistry and it's also really nice because it targets a
pinpoint. It doesn't measure a big area. It gets very very
precise and so we can measure things like chemical veins
where there are special minerals that have been
precipitated from the water. We can shoot really small things
or we can just shoot across the surface of a rock and see how
it changes over a distance and so by collecting all this data every day
we've been able to find some cool things. We found
some really interesting minerals so ChemCam was the first
instrument on the road to detect the sulfate veins we've
seen all over Gale Crater. It also has found some places
where there's manganese, which is sort of a weird metal that
people are not familiar with, but manganese really only gets
concentrated when you have conditions that are known as
oxidizing, so that's not what we expected for ancient Mars.
So we're trying to scratch our heads and
understand what that means for what the environment was like.
More generally, we're seeing all of these different little
veins and little interesting areas of
chemistry areas with really high silica. These all tend
to point back to water interacting with the rocks.
Water transporting chemicals from one place to another
depositing them in concentrated locations. And so with all
this data from we can watch how the chemistry changes over the
mission and we can measure these really small features and
all of that is indicating that at least at Gale Crater and we
think we'll probably see something similar at Jezero Crater
with SuperCam is that the the water has been interacting with
Mars and it's happened multiple times. It's not that it was
just wet once, it's that it was wet and then the rocks
solidified and then it fractured more water came
through and then it fractured again and more water came through so it's this
complicated story of repeated uh cycles of water interaction
rather than just one time a long time ago when it was wet.
Wow. So ChemCam was definitely a busy rover and has set
Perseverance up for some success sounds like. Yeah, we
hope so. So what are you most excited about for the Mars 2020
mission? A lot of things I mean, it's an exciting mission
overall. It's I think for me the most. Thing is just getting
to see a new place on Mars from the ground. You know,
I was lucky enough to map Gale Crater before we landed there
so I knew what it look like from space and then we
got to see it on the ground and now having done similar work
at Jezero Crater, you know we have our ideas coming in from orbit
and then you land on the ground and you see what it looks like
from the ground. That's super exciting, but it's also a
really exciting mission because it's the first step toward
sample return. For the Perseverance Rover, we'll be
collecting samples of rocks and soils and storing them on the
surface of Mars for a future mission to come and retrieve
them and bring them back to Earth. And so it's really
exciting to be part of the team that gets to pick those samples,
get to make all the measurements with the rover
instruments like SuperCam that will provide the supporting
information to put those samples into the geologic
context so they can be useful when they're returned to Earth.
And it can really answer some of our big questions about
Mars that we can't answer with the rover that's up there. We
have to bring them back to the lab. So it's really exciting
that this mission is the first step in the process. Awesome.
Yeah, there's a lot to look forward to. So when Perseverance
lands you're going to be supporting two Rovers on Mars.
That seems like a good problem to have, but how are you going
to manage? Uh it's gonna be a little bit crazy. We're
still figuring out who's going to be living on Mars time
when and who's going to be doing what when. The nice
thing is that it's a big team and everyone has their own
specific roles, so no one has to be on all the time you know.
You participate, you do your role. I usually do down link for the
instruments, which means I look at the data as it comes down
from Mars and you know flag things that are interesting
but I don't have to do that 24/7 for both Rovers. I do that
you know every once in a while for each rover and so um for
the most part, it should be manageable I hope. We'll see
how Mars time goes, but we just had a meeting today where
it sounds like we won't necessarily have to be on Mars
time all the time either. So we might actually be able to
get some sleep as well. Well, we are certainly excited and
looking forward to Mars 2020 landing. It's coming up soon
now and definitely appreciate you taking the time to talk
with us about some of your experiences already on rover missions
and what you're looking forward to with Mars 2020. So
with that, I'll say thank you and thanks to everyone who
listened to our interview and if you have other questions about
what's going on with the perseverance mission and how
USGS Astrogeology is involved; we do have some other
interviews we've conducted with our team members so you
have to check those out on our page as well. And thanks
everyone for watching. Thanks Ryan for your time. Yeah, bye
everyone.