Multiscale and multispectral characterization of mineralogy with the ExoMars 2020 rover remote sensing payload
Abstract
In 2020, the European Space Agency and Roscosmos will launch the ExoMars rover, with the scientific objective to detect evidence of life within the martian surface via the deployment of a 2 meter drill. The ExoMars Pasteur payload contains several imaging and spectroscopic instruments key to this objective: the Panoramic Camera (PanCam), Infrared Spectrometer for ExoMars (ISEM), and Close‐UP Imager (CLUPI). These instruments are able to collect data at a variety of spatial (sub‐mm to decimeter) and spectral (3.3 to 120 nm) resolutions across the 440 to 3300 nm wavelength range and collectively will form a picture of the geological and morphological characteristics of the surface terrain surrounding the rover. We deployed emulators of this instrument suite at terrestrial analog sites that formed in a range of aqueous environments to test their ability to detect and characterize science targets. We find that the emulator suite is able to effectively detect, characterize, and refine the compositions of multiple targets at working distances spanning from 2‐18 m. We report on: (i) the detection of hydrothermal alteration minerals including Fe‐smectites and gypsum from basaltic substrates, (ii) the detection of late‐stage diagenetic gypsum veins embedded in exposures of sedimentary mudstone, (iii) multispectral evidence of compositional differences detected from fossiliferous mudstones, and (iv) approaches to cross‐referencing multi‐scale and multi‐resolution data. These findings aid in the development of data products and analysis toolkits in advance of the ExoMars rover mission.
Citation
Allender , E J , Cousins , C R , Gunn , M D & Caudill , C M 2020 , ' Multiscale and multispectral characterization of mineralogy with the ExoMars 2020 rover remote sensing payload ' , Earth and Space Science , vol. 7 , no. 4 , e2019EA000692 . https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EA000692
Publication
Earth and Space Science
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2333-5084Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright ©2020. The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
This work was supported by the UK Space Agency (ST/P001297/1 and ST/P001394/1). Cousins also acknowledges the Royal Society of Edinburgh for funding.Collections
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