• Corpus ID: 195256557

RAMAN LASER SPECTROMETER ( RLS ) FOR EXOMARS 2018 ROVER MISSION : CURRENT STATUS AND SCIENCE OPERATION MODE ON POWDERED SAMPLES

@inproceedings{Rull2013RAMANLS,
  title={RAMAN LASER SPECTROMETER ( RLS ) FOR EXOMARS 2018 ROVER MISSION : CURRENT STATUS AND SCIENCE OPERATION MODE ON POWDERED SAMPLES},
  author={Fernando Rull and Sylvestre Maurice and Eva Diaz and Guillermo Lopez and A. Catal{\'a}},
  year={2013},
  url={https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:195256557}
}

• F. Rull, S. Maurice, +2 authors A. Catalá
• Published 2013
• Physics, Engineering, Environmental Science

The Raman instrument inside the mission. The 2018 ExoMars rover mission has experienced several modifications in the last two years affecting particularly the international consortium and the original instrumental payload [1]. The mission being at the present a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos). Despite these important changes the key scientific objectives still remains giving to ExoMars an important role on the exploration of… 

The Raman instrument inside the mission. The 2018 ExoMars rover mission has experienced several modifications in the last two years affecting particularly the international consortium and the original instrumental payload [1]. The mission being at the present a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos). Despite these important changes the key scientific objectives still remains giving to ExoMars an important role on the exploration of Mars previous to the future sample return missions. These objectives are mainly: to search for signs of past and present life on Mars; to characterize the water/geochemical environment as a function of depth in the shallow subsurface; to study the surface environment and identify hazards to future human missions; to investigate the planet’s subsurface and deep interior to better understand the evolution and habitability of Mars. These goals are in a great extent based on the unique capability to drill the subsurface and collect samples up to 2 meters depth. The Raman (RSL) instrument is part of the analytical suite of four instruments located in the analytical laboratory of the rover (ALD) and capable to address these mineralogical, geochemical and exobiological issues. For that the Raman spectrometer will analyze at the mineral grain scale samples crushed into a fine powder by means of an automatic crusher and a dosing station [2]. The RLS instrument is focused in the search for past or present life, which is related to the direct identification of organic compounds, and the identification of minerals products as indicators of biological activity; and also the description of the water-related processes, which is associated to the identification of minerals phases produced by fluids-rock interactions, and the characterization of igneous minerals and their alteration products [3].