[meteorite-list] APL Mineral-Mapper Has Key Role in Selecting Next Mars Rover Landing Site

[Ron Baalke]

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Office of Communications and Public Affairs
Laurel, Maryland

Media Contact: Michael Buckley
(240) 228-7536 or (443) 778-7536
michael.buckley at jhuapl.edu

October 19, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Note: Images to accompany this release are available at: 
http://crism.jhuapl.edu/newscenter/articles/101907.php

APL MINERAL-MAPPER HAS KEY ROLE IN SELECTING NEXT MARS ROVER LANDING SITE

Scientists scouting potential landing sites for NASA's next Mars 
rover mission are using new data from a powerful mineral-mapping 
camera to narrow the site selection.

When NASA Mars Program officials and members of the Mars science 
community gather in California next week to pare down the list of 
candidate landing sites for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), 
they can refer to 125 new images from the Compact Reconnaissance 
Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM). The images and accompanying 
analysis products are available on the CRISM Web site at 
http://crism.jhuapl.edu/msl_landing_sites/.

Built and operated by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics 
Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., CRISM is one of six science 
instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, currently circling 
the planet.

"Since MSL will assess whether Mars ever had an environment capable 
of supporting life, it will have to land in an area with a mineral 
record indicative of past water," says Dr. Scott Murchie, CRISM 
principal investigator from APL. "CRISM is critical to the selection 
process because it is the only instrument on MRO with the spectral 
power to 'see' the chemical makeup of the rocks."

One of CRISM's main mission objectives is to find and investigate 
areas that were wet long enough to leave a mineral signature. 
Offering greater capability to map spectral variations than any 
similar instrument sent to another planet, CRISM can read 544 
"colors" of reflected sunlight to detect minerals in the surface.

The imaging spectrometer is among MRO's cadre of advanced sensors 
studying Mars in unprecedented detail and contributing to the MSL 
landing site selection effort. This includes correlating CRISM's 
spectral data with high-resolution pictures of boulders, craters, 
sediment layers and other surface features acquired by the High 
Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and Context Camera 
(CTX). "CRISM images provide the scientific criteria that will allow 
the MSL team to narrow its choices," Murchie says. "By combining data 
from the MRO instruments, we can create a complete picture of the 
Martian surface."

The CRISM data release consists of user-friendly, color-coded, 
thematic images. Different versions of each image show clays, 
sulfates, and unaltered minerals that help tell the story of past 
water and volcanic processes on Mars. The set also includes infrared 
images of surface brightness and enhanced visible-color composites. 
Each image covers a square area roughly 6 miles (10 kilometers) on a 
side, with a spatial resolution of approximately 66 feet (20 meters) per pixel.

"The data products that we have generated for all the proposed MSL 
landing sites are scaled in a similar manner. This should make it 
easy for scientists and the public alike to distinguish between 
landing sites that possess a wide range of rock types, from ones that 
do not," says APL's Dr. Olivier Barnouin-Jha, who with Dr. Frank 
Seelos (also of APL) assembled the products in this release. "Going 
to a location with greater rock diversity will ensure that MSL 
significantly enhances our understanding of the geological history of 
Mars, including the history of water."

CRISM has mapped more than half the planet in its low-resolution mode 
since MRO's two-year science mission began in November 2006, in 
addition to making more than 2,500 high-resolution observations of 
the surface and nearly 3,000 atmospheric observations.
APL, which has built more than 150 spacecraft instruments over the 
past four decades, led the effort to develop, integrate, and test 
CRISM. The CRISM team includes experts from universities, government 
agencies and small businesses in the United States and abroad; visit 
http://crism.jhuapl.edu for more information. Information about the 
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Science Laboratory missions is 
available online at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Jet Propulsion 
Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, 
manages the MRO mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, 
Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the prime 
contractor and built the MRO spacecraft.
                                                        
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