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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
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Imagery captured by a navigation camera aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover on Jan. 23 shows the position of a cover on the SHERLOC instrument. The cover had become stuck several weeks earlier but the rover team has since found a way to address the issue so the instrument can continue to operate.NASA/JPL-Caltech After six months of effort, an instrument that helps the Mars rover look for potential signs of ancient microbial life has come back online.
The SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has analyzed a rock target with its spectrometer and camera for the first time since encountering an issue this past January. The instrument plays a key role in the mission’s search for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed on June 17 that the instrument succeeded in collecting data.
“Six months of running diagnostics, testing, imagery and data analysis, troubleshooting, and retesting couldn’t come with a better conclusion,” said SHERLOC principal investigator Kevin Hand of JPL.
Imagery captured by a navigation camera aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover on Jan. 23 shows the position of a cover on the SHERLOC instrument. The cover had become stuck several weeks earlier but the rover team has since found a way to address the issue so the instrument can continue to operate.NASA/JPL-Caltech Mounted on the rover’s robotic arm, SHERLOC uses two cameras and a laser spectrometer to search for organic compounds and minerals in rocks that have been altered in watery environments and may reveal signs of past microbial life. On Jan. 6, a movable lens cover designed to protect the instrument’s spectrometer and one of its cameras from dust became frozen in a position that prevented SHERLOC from collecting data.
Analysis by the SHERLOC team pointed to the malfunction of a small motor responsible for moving the protective lens cover as well as adjusting focus for the spectrometer and the Autofocus and Context Imager (ACI) camera. By testing potential solutions on a duplicate SHERLOC instrument at JPL, the team began a long, meticulous evaluation process to see if, and how, the lens cover could be moved into the open position.
Perseverance’s team used the SHERLOC instrument’s Autofocus and Context Imager to capture this image of its calibration target on May 11 to confirm an issue with a stuck lens cover had been resolved. A silhouette of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes is at the center of the target.NASA/JPL-Caltech SHERLOC Sleuthing
Among many other steps taken, the team tried heating the lens cover’s small motor, commanding the rover’s robotic arm to rotate the SHERLOC instrument under different orientations with supporting Mastcam-Z imagery, rocking the mechanism back and forth to loosen any debris potentially jamming the lens cover, and even engaging the rover’s percussive drill to try jostling it loose. On March 3, imagery returned from Perseverance showed that the ACI cover had opened more than 180 degrees, clearing the imager’s field of view and enabling the ACI to be placed near its target.
“With the cover out of the way, a line of sight for the spectrometer and camera was established. We were halfway there,” said Kyle Uckert, SHERLOC deputy principal investigator at JPL. “We still needed a way to focus the instrument on a target. Without focus, SHERLOC images would be blurry and the spectral signal would be weak.”
Like any good ophthalmologist, the team set about figuring out SHERLOC’s prescription. Since they couldn’t adjust the focus of the instrument’s optics, they relied on the rover’s robotic arm to make minute adjustments in the distance between SHERLOC and its target in order to get the best image resolution. SHERLOC was commanded to take pictures of its calibration target so that the team could check the effectiveness of this approach.
This image of NASA’s Perseverance rover gathering data on the “Walhalla Glades” abrasion was taken in the “Bright Angel” region of Jezero Crater by one of the rover’s front hazard avoidance cameras on June 14. The WATSON camera on the SHERLOC instrument is closest to the Martian surface.NASA/JPL-Caltech “The rover’s robotic arm is amazing. It can be commanded in small, quarter-millimeter steps to help us evaluate SHERLOC’s new focus position, and it can place SHERLOC with high accuracy on a target,” said Uckert. “After testing first on Earth and then on Mars, we figured out the best distance for the robotic arm to place SHERLOC is about 40 millimeters,” or 1.58 inches. “At that distance, the data we collect should be as good as ever.”
Confirmation of that fine positioning of the ACI on a Martian rock target came down on May 20. The verification on June 17 that the spectrometer is also functional checked the team’s last box, confirming that SHERLOC is operational.
“Mars is hard, and bringing instruments back from the brink is even harder,” said Perseverance project manager Art Thompson of JPL. “But the team never gave up. With SHERLOC back online, we’re continuing our explorations and sample collection with a full complement of science instruments.”
Perseverance is in the later stages of its fourth science campaign, looking for evidence of carbonate and olivine deposits in the “Margin Unit,” an area along the inside of Jezero Crater’s rim. On Earth, carbonates typically form in the shallows of freshwater or alkaline lakes. It’s hypothesized that this also might be the case for the Margin Unit, which formed over 3 billion years ago.
More About the Mission
A key objective of Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about Perseverance:
science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance
News Media Contacts
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Charles Blue
NASA Headquarters
202-385-1600 / 202-802-5345
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / charles.e.blue@nasa.gov
2024-091
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Last Updated Jun 26, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
3 min read
NASA Delivers Science Instrument to JAXA’s Martian Moons Mission
On March 14, NASA delivered its gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer instrument to JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) for integration onto JAXA’s MMX (Martian Moons eXploration) mission spacecraft and final system-level testing.
U.S. and Japanese team members gather around and discuss the gamma-ray spectrometer portion of the MEGANE instrument during its development at Johns Hopkins APL. NASA/JAXA/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman NASA’s Mars-moon Exploration with Gamma Ray and Neutrons (MEGANE) instrument, developed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, in collaboration with colleagues from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, will play a major role in the MMX mission, which aims to characterize and determine the origin of Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos and deliver a sample from Phobos to Earth.
Scientists suspect the asteroid-sized bodies either are remnants of an ancient collision between Mars and a large impactor or are themselves asteroids captured by Mars’ gravity. By measuring the energies of neutrons and gamma rays emitted from the surface of Phobos, MEGANE will let MMX “see” the elemental composition of the moon’s surface and help peg the likely origin of the moon.
“MEGANE will be a key instrument on MMX, making a big contribution toward the goal of understanding the origin of the Martian moons,” said Thomas Statler, MEGANE program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “NASA is glad to see MEGANE ready for integration, another step in NASA’s continuing collaboration with JAXA on this groundbreaking mission.”
The instrument team received the green light last fall to ship MEGANE (pronounced meh-GAH-nay, the Japanese word for “eyeglasses”) after the project’s standing review board evaluated the device’s readiness. That milestone marked the end of a demanding 6-year design and development process, which met NASA’s cost and schedule constraints.
“Passing the pre-ship review and delivering the hardware are significant steps for all those working on MEGANE,” said APL’s David Lawrence, the instrument’s principal investigator. “Like all spaceflight builds, we have had challenges getting to this point, but we are excited to see how MEGANE works with all the other spacecraft components for this exciting MMX mission.”
With MEGANE now in Japan, the MMX team will begin integrating the scientific instruments, including MEGANE, with other spacecraft components, before putting the entire system through a series of tests in preparation for launch, which is scheduled for fiscal year 2026, aboard a JAXA H3 rocket.
“For me personally, I’m looking forward to all the integration and test operations that are to come,” said Sarah Bucior, a space systems engineer in SES and the MEGANE I&T Lead Engineer. “I love rockets, so I’m really interested to see how they build their spacecraft and then follow it along to launch operations and liftoff.”
MEGANE was developed under NASA’s Discovery Program, which provides low-cost access to space. The Discovery Program is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The instrument science team includes investigators from APL, LLNL, Marietta College, NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, and JAXA.
To learn more about MEGANE and the MMX mission, visit http://megane.jhuapl.edu.
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A team of engineers prepares to integrate TRIDENT – short for The Regolith Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain – into the belly of NASA’s first robotic Moon rover, VIPER – short for the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover. NASA/Bill Stafford A team of engineers prepares to integrate TRIDENT – short for The Regolith Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain – into the belly of NASA’s first robotic Moon rover, VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover).
TRIDENT, designed and developed by engineers at Honeybee Robotics in Altadena, California, is the fourth and final science instrument to be installed into VIPER. NASA engineers have already successfully integrated VIPER’s three other science instruments into the rover. These include: the MSOLO (Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations), NIRVSS (Near-Infrared Volatiles Spectrometer System), and NSS (Neutron Spectrometer System).
Shortly after TRIDENT was integrated in the clean room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the team also successfully tested its ability to power on, release the locks that hold the drill in place during launch, extend to its full depth of more than three feet (one meter), perform percussive drilling, and return to its stowed position inside the rover.
TRIDENT will dig up soil from below the lunar surface using a rotary percussive drill – meaning it both spins to cut into the ground and hammers to fragment hard material for more energy-efficient drilling. In addition to being able to measure the strength and compactedness of the lunar soil, the drill also carries a temperature sensor to take readings below the surface. VIPER will launch to the Moon aboard Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. It will reach its destination at Mons Mouton near the Moon’s South Pole. Scientists will work with these four instruments to better understand the origin of water and other resources on the Moon, which could support human exploration as part of NASA’s Artemis campaign.
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s Perseverance puts its robotic arm to work around a rocky outcrop called “Skinner Ridge” in a set of images captured in June and July 2022 by the rover’s Mastcam-Z camera system. SHERLOC is mounted on the end of the arm.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS Engineers are working to stabilize a dust cover on one of the science instrument’s cameras.
Data and imagery from NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover indicate one of two covers that keep dust from accumulating on the optics of the SHERLOC instrument remains partially open. In this position, the cover interferes with science data collection operations. Mounted on the rover’s robotic arm, SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) uses cameras, a spectrometer, and a laser to search for organic compounds and minerals that have been altered in watery environments and may be signs of past microbial life.
The mission determined on Jan. 6 that the cover was oriented in such a position that some of its operation modes could not successfully operate. An engineering team has been investigating to determine the root cause and possible solutions. Recently, the cover partially opened. To better understand the behavior of the cover’s motor, the team has been sending commands to the instrument that alter the amount of power being fed to it.
With the cover in its current position, the instrument cannot use its laser on rock targets, and cannot collect spectroscopy data. However, imaging microscopy can still be acquired with WATSON, a color camera on SHERLOC used for taking close-up images of rock grains and surface textures. WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) operates through a different aperture.
SHERLOC is part of a seven-instrument suite on Perseverance. During development of the mission, the team designed the instrument suite such that the rover could still achieve its science objectives should any single instrument fail, as there is some overlap among the capabilities of the instruments. Along with SHERLOC, PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry) and SuperCam also perform spectroscopy.
Currently making its way to explore an area nicknamed “Beehive Geyser,” the rover marked its 1,000th Martian day, or sol, on the Red Planet on Dec. 12, 2023 – more than 300 sols beyond its initial prime mission. Since the rover’s landing Feb. 18, 2021, SHERLOC has scanned and provided rich data on 34 rock targets, creating a total of 261 hyperspectral maps of those targets. Featuring a radioisotope power system, Perseverance’s design is based on the agency’s Curiosity Mars rover, which is still going strong after more than 11 years (4,000 sols) on the Red Planet.
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about Perseverance:
mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
News Media Contacts
Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
301-286-6284 / 202-358-1501
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
2024-015
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Last Updated Feb 13, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
5 min read
Laser Instrument on NASA’s LRO Successfully ‘Pings’ Indian Moon Lander
For the first time at the Moon, a laser beam was transmitted and reflected between an orbiting NASA spacecraft and an Oreo-sized device on ISRO’s (Indian Space Research Organisation) Vikram lander on the lunar surface. The successful experiment opens the door to a new style of precisely locating targets on the Moon’s surface.
At 3 p.m. EST on Dec. 12, 2023, NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) pointed its laser altimeter instrument toward Vikram. The lander was 62 miles, or 100 kilometers, away from LRO, near Manzinus crater in the Moon’s South Pole region, when LRO transmitted laser pulses toward it. After the orbiter registered light that had bounced back from a tiny NASA retroreflector aboard Vikram, NASA scientists knew their technique had finally worked.
ISRO’s (Indian Space Research Organization) Vikram lander, with a NASA retroreflector on it, touched down on the Moon on Aug. 23, 2023. The camera aboard NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) took this picture four days later. The lander is in the center of the image, its dark shadow visible against the bright halo around it. The halo formed after rocket plume interacted with the fine-grained regolith (similar to soil) on the Moon’s surface. The image shows an area that’s 1 mile, or 1.7 kilometers, wide. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University Sending laser pulses toward an object and measuring how long it takes the light to bounce back is a commonly used way to track the locations of Earth-orbiting satellites from the ground. But using the technique in reverse – to send laser pulses from a moving spacecraft to a stationary one to determine its precise location – has many applications at the Moon, scientists say.
“We’ve showed that we can locate our retroreflector on the surface from the Moon’s orbit,” said Xiaoli Sun, who led the team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, that developed the retroreflector on Vikram as part of a partnership between NASA and ISRO. “The next step is to improve the technique so that it can become routine for missions that want to use these retroreflectors in the future.”
Only 2 inches, or 5 centimeters, wide, NASA’s tiny but mighty retroreflector, called a Laser Retroreflector Array, has eight quartz-corner-cube prisms set into a dome-shaped aluminum frame. The device is simple and durable, scientists say, requiring neither power nor maintenance, and can last for decades. Its configuration allows the retroreflector to reflect light coming in from any direction back to its source.
Only 2 inches, or 5 centimeters, wide, NASA’s Laser Retroreflector Array has eight quartz-corner-cube prisms set into a dome-shaped aluminum frame. This configuration allows the device to reflect light coming in from any direction back to its source. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Retroreflectors can be used for many applications in science and exploration and, indeed, have been in use at the Moon since the Apollo era. By reflecting light back to Earth, the suitcase-size retroreflectors revealed that the Moon is moving away from our planet at a rate of 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) per year.
This new generation of tiny retroreflectors has even more applications than their larger predecessors. On the International Space Station, they’re used as precision markers that help cargo-delivery spacecraft dock autonomously.
In the future, they could guide Artemis astronauts to the surface in the dark, for example, or mark the locations of spacecraft already on the surface, helping astronauts or uncrewed spacecraft land next to them.
But there’s more work to do before retroreflectors can light up the Moon. The biggest hurdle to their immediate adoption is that LRO’s altimeter, which has operated for 13 years beyond its primary mission, is the only laser instrument orbiting the Moon for now. But the instrument wasn’t designed to pinpoint a target; since 2009, the altimeter – called LOLA – has been responsible for mapping the Moon’s topography to prepare for missions to the surface.
“We would like LOLA to point to this Oreo-sized target and hit it every time, which is hard,” said Daniel Cremons, a NASA Goddard scientist who works with Sun. It took the altimeter eight tries to contact Vikram’s retroreflector.
LOLA works by dispatching five laser beams toward the Moon and measuring how long it takes each one to bounce back (the quicker the light returns, the less distance between LOLA and the surface, and thus the higher the elevation in that area). Each laser beam covers an area 32 feet, or 10 meters, wide, from a 62-mile, or 100-kilometer, altitude. Because there are large gaps between the beams, there is only a small chance that the laser pulse can contact a retroreflector during each pass of the lunar orbiter over the lander.
Altimeters are great for detecting craters, rocks, and boulders to create global elevation maps of the Moon. But they aren’t ideal for pointing to within one-hundredth of a degree of a retroreflector, which is what’s required to consistently achieve a ping. A future laser that slowly and continuously rakes the surface without any gaps in coverage would help tiny retroreflectors meet their potential.
For now, the team behind NASA’s miniature retroreflectors will continue to use LRO’s laser altimeter to help refine the position of targets on the surface, especially landers.
Several NASA retroreflectors are slated to fly aboard public and private Moon landers, including one on JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) SLIM lander, due to land on the Moon on Jan. 19, 2024, and one built by Intuitive Machines, a private company scheduled to launch its spacecraft to the Moon in mid-February. Intuitive Machines will carry six NASA payloads, including the retroreflector, under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
Lonnie Shekhtman
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Media contact:
Nancy Neal Jones,
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
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Last Updated Jan 18, 2024 Related Terms
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