Advantages of Lander/Rover Raman Spectroscopy- HIGP

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Planetary Exploration

The Advantages of Lander/Rover Raman Spectroscopy

Orbiters, landers, and rovers are becoming increasingly important for NASA's attainment of solar system exploration goals. Current methods of analysis via lander/rover entail instrumentation either in close physical contact with sample (i.e. x-ray fluorescence), or sample aquisition (thermal analysis or mass spectrometry). Other methods such as VNIR (visible, near infrared) and TIR (thermal infrared) spectroscopy are also used for analysis. These methods have their advantages, however, in the current state of development have inherent limitations. For example, VNIR and TIR spectroscopy offers many benefits toward analysis of planetary surfaces, but have broad overlapping spectral features which complicate interpretation.

Raman spectroscopy offers great advantages to lander/rover science labs. These advantages include determining samples of interest by stand-off analysis and spectral sampling characterized by non-overlapping feartures. This results in analyses that require less power consumption, reduced lander/rover structural damage, and little to no ambiguity when interpreting spectra. All of these factors put together equal more time to explore and characterize planetary surfaces. However, despite these advantages, it must be noted that they are only possible in a lander/rover context. Stand-off Raman is not capable of replacing large area analyses by orbital VNIR and TIR spectroscopy methods.

For more information on the Raman Spectroscopy Laboratory at HIGP contact Dr. Shiv Sharma.
Webpage maintained by Josh Cahill.