The Canadian Space Agency has chosen a team of researchers, led by a Western University professor, to develop instruments that’ll better analyze mineral and rock structures on Mars.
Dr. Roberta Flemming, from Western University’s Department of Earth Sciences and the Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration, is getting support for proposing the development of a concept for a miniaturized in-situ X-ray diffractometer.
The technique of X-ray diffraction is used to determine a rock’s mineralogy, revealing a history of how it crystallized and reacted to heat, fluids or shock.
But the current X-ray diffraction tool being used by NASA’s Curiosity Rover on Mars crushes rocks into a powder, “consuming power and rover time and also destroying critical information about the relationship between the minerals in the rock,” says a media release from Western University.
Flemming recognized a need for a better instrument, and is now leading a team of researchers from Western, Guelph University and Brock University to lay the foundation for a more capable instrument to be used in the future.
They’ll be using Martian analogue rocks, minerals common on the Martian surface, and Martian meteorites to compare current results from Flemming’s premier micro XRD lab at Western with results using various rover-candidate miniaturized X-ray components and geometries tested by PROTO Manufacturing in Windsor.
The concept study is getting funding from the Canadian Space Agency.
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