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when nasa's mars science laboratory or msl lands on Mars rover will have many
ambitious science goals named curiosity the river will end in Gale Crater this
is an ideal spot to study the exposed rock that offers a tantalizing clues
about Mars past one of the ten science instruments that curiosity carries is a
unique analysis tool called chemin short for chemistry and mineralogy about the
size of a large shoe box
this portable laboratory will accurately define the mineral composition of
samples taken from the Martian soil and rocks
join us as we made the team at NASA Ames Research Center who developed the chemin
instrument as well as discover how this technology is proven to be indispensable
right here on earth
yeah
to tell us more about one of the instruments on the Mars Science
Laboratory i'm here with NASA geologists David Blake he's the inventor and
principal investigator on the chemin instrument David can you tell us more
about Kevin and what it will be doing on MSL well Kevin is an x-ray diffraction
instrument and this is the first time we've ever sent an instrument like that
in space and x-ray diffraction is the gold standard for how to analyze
minerals on the earth in a large laboratory so for the first time ever
we'll be able to definitively determine what minerals are present rocks and by
knowing that we will understand the history of the early Mars environment
gale crater is one of the oldest and deepest craters on the surface of Mars
and we believe it has sentimental article records that go back as far as
four billion years building with the B and the significance of that is it on
the earth with plate tectonics we have no settlements that are that old that we
can really look at and interpret this is really the only way to look at a four
billion year old sediment and say how it formed what the conditions were at that
time how is this different than Spirit and Opportunity that have come before
well we're doing something similar to what spirit and opportunity has done but
I'm much much larger scale Spirit and Opportunity were kind of like feel
geologists they would go out with the hand lens and hammer and and look at
rocks may be analyzed the surface of Iraq but Mars Science Laboratory goes to
step further
we collect those rocks collect powders and we have essentially a full-up
terrestrial laboratory inside the body of mars science laboratory and that's
what's going to be different
how do you get a laboratory to fit on a rover that's going to go to another
planet
okay well you have to make it small that's one thing as small and and a lot
less math so a regular diffractometer lab is about like double-wide
refrigerator-sized with lots of complicated motions of the detector of
the sample and of the source we kind of had a new idea where we actually vibrate
the sample with the tuning fork so that the sample itself does all emotions and
then the machine doesn't have to so we essentially went from a complicated big
machine with many moving parts to a small simple machine with no moving
parts
what's the most exciting thing about Kim and flying on MSL for you
I've been doing diffraction have been working in this business for 35 years
and so
having this kind of come to fruition finally is really exciting to me
to tell us more about this technology we're meeting with Philippe stars and
who helped develop the chemin instrument he is now the chief scientist students
you a division of Olympus that is commercializing the technology sleep
what is x-ray diffraction is it similar to regular x-ray imaging techniques
it's actually quite different x-ray diffraction is a method for analyzing
crystalline materials every crystal every type of crystal has a very unique
signature in x-ray diffraction crystals are everywhere around us during the
Georgica materials but they're also in materials such as metals or ceramics or
concrete or even the pharmaceutical product so by using our instruments
we can identify the nature of the crystals inside a inside example I can
take an example of not to material star very much like it very much different
materials made of 100-percent of carbon one is graphite and the other one is
diamond x-ray diffraction can tell the difference between diamond and graphite
work traditional chemical advisors would see carbon tell us how the chemin
instrument involved into a commercially produced product i used to work with
david blake at NASA and we developed a number of prototypes to demonstrate the
capability of the technology and in the process of doing that we have a chance
to test our instruments in the field and there was a first-time x-ray diffraction
was taken out of the lab seeing the capability that judges could use on the
side was quite
revelation that there were a number of commercial applications that could
derive from the technology and what types of areas is being used in so we
reached our first product in 2007 is called Terra and the terror is being
used by a number of scientists engineers in very different fields such as an OG
obviously but also know the oil industry for drilling in mining or even in the
pharmaceutical industry or museums how's it been used in museum and the objective
was to have an instrument that could analyze surface materials mostly
pigments in works of art such as paintings and frescoes or sculptures and
non-destructively tara or incoming are both destructive instrument you need to
sample and grind that sample which obviously would be a problem when you
were analyzing a very expensive and rare and work of art and what are some of the
more interesting works of art that you've been able to see so that
instrument was taking into unique sites such as a king tut's tomb or the
Acropolis in Athens what do you see is the future of the cam and technology
what's unique about what we've created for the least Mars project as well as
for the commercial spin-off is that there's nothing in the world the
then what we've developed that allows doing these analysis in the field and
almost instantly you get answers within minutes of tens of minutes it reopens
new arises for some applications whether their scientific or industrial so
there's a lot of potential for the technique that was developed for Kevin
thanks for joining us and meet us again on our next destination innovation
for more information about the chemin instrument please visit nasa.gov slash
aims
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