Curiosity Gets New Vision

The Mars rover Curiosity has something called the ChemCam instrument which is short for Chemistry and Camera. This is able to provide information about the chemical composition of rock structures it reaches by pulsing a laser beam at them. The zap induced sparks are then studied with reference to a spectrometer to determine just what the rock is composed of.

The ChemCam had been out of commission due to a laser malfunction and this had made the instrument worthless. However with help from the instrument’s team members at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and in France automated repairs have been conducted on the laser and they seem to have worked.

The repairs included an alternative auto-focus method following loss of use of a small laser. This laser had served for focusing the instrument during the Curiosity rover’s first two years of exploration on Mars. The team took several images using the auto focus and determined which were the best after having them transferred to Earth, before reverting these setting to the actual instrument on Mars

The tedious but successful repairs of the science project have allowed the Curiosity rover to continue in its quest with the newly refurbished rock vision.