CheMin

Transcription

(Roar of fire and wind as MSL enters Mars' atmosphere) Estelle Dodson: When NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, or MSL, lands on Mars the rover will have many ambitious science goals. Named Curiosity, the rover will land in Gale Crater. This is an ideal spot to study the exposed rock that offers us tantalizing clues about Mars' past. One of the ten science instruments that Curiosity carries is a unique analysis tool called CheMin, short for "Chemistry and Mineralogy." About the size of a large shoebox, this portable laboratory will accurately define the mineral composition of samples taken from the Martian soil and rocks. Join us as we meet the team at NASA Ames Research Center who developed the CheMin instrument as well as discover how this technology is proving to be indispensable right here on Earth. (Music) (Electronic Sounds of DataI) Estelle: To tell us more about one of the instruments on the Mars Science Laboratory, I'm here with NASA Geologist David Blake. He's the inventor and Principal Investigator on the CheMin instrument. David, can you tell us more about CheMin and what it will be doing on MSL? David Blake: Well, CheMin is an X-ray diffraction instrument and this is the first time we've ever sent an instrument like that into space. X-ray diffraction is the gold standard for how to analyze minerals on the Earth in a large laboratory. So, for the first time ever we will be able to definitively determine what minerals are present in rocks. And by knowing that, we will understand the history of the early Mars environment. Gale Crater is one of the oldest and deepest craters on the surface of Mars. And we believe it has sedimentological records that go back as far as four billion years. Billion with a "B." And the significance of that, is that on the Earth with plate tectonics, we have no sediments that are that old that we can really look at and interpret. This is really the only way to look at a four billion year old sediment and say how it formed and what the conditions were at that time. Estelle: How is this different than Spirit and Opportunity that have come before? David: Well, we're doing something similar to what Spirit and Opportunity has done, but on a much larger scale. Spirit and Opportunity were kind of like field geologists. They would go out with a hand lens and a hammer and look at rocks, maybe analyze the surface of a rock. But, Mars Science Laboratory goes a step further and we collect those rocks, collect powders, and we have essentially a full up terrestrial laboratory inside the body of Mars Science Laboratory and that's what's going to be different. Estelle: How do you get a laboratory to fit on a rover that's going to go to another planet? David: Okay, well you have to make it small, that's one thing, small and a lot less mass. So, a regular diffractometer in the lab is about like double-wide refrigerator-sized, with lots of complicated motions of the detector, of the sample and of the source. We kind of had a new idea where we actually vibrate the sample with a tuning fork, so that the sample itself does all the motions and the machine doesn't have to. So, we essentially went from a complicated big machine with many moving parts to a small simple machine with no moving parts. Estelle: What's the most exciting thing about CheMin flying on MSL for you? David: So I've been doing diffraction, I've been working in the business for thirty-five years and so having this kind of come to fruition finally is really exciting to me. Estelle: To tell us more about this technology, we're meeting with Philippe Sarrazin, who helped develop the CheMin instrument. He is now the Chief Scientist at InXitu, a division of Olympus that is commercializing the technology. Philippe, what is X-ray diffraction? Is it similar to regular X-ray imaging techniques? Philippe Sarrazin: It's actually quite different. X-ray diffraction is a method for analyzing crystalline materials. Every crystal, every type of crystal has a very unique signature in X-ray diffraction. Crystals are everywhere around us. They're in geological materials, but they're also in man-made materials such as metals, or ceramics or concrete, or even pharmaceutical products. So by using our instruments we can identify the nature of the crystals inside a sample. I can take an example of, you know, two materials that are very much alike, but very much different. Two materials that are made out of 100 percent of carbon: one is graphite and the other one is diamond. X-ray diffraction can tell the difference between diamond and graphite where traditional chemical analyzers would see carbon. Estelle: Tell us how the CheMin instrument evolved into a commercially produced product. Philippe: I used to work with David Blake at NASA and we developed a number of prototypes to demonstrate the capability of the technology. In the process of doing that we had the chance to test our instruments in the field and it was the first time X-ray diffraction was taken out of the lab. Seeing the capability that geologists could use on the site was quite a revelation that there were a number of commercial applications that could be derived from that technology. Estelle: And what types of areas is it being used in? Philippe: So we released our first product in 2007, it's called Terra. And Terra is being used by a number of scientists and engineers in very different fields such as geology obviously, but also the oil industry for oil drilling, in mining or even the pharmaceutical industry or museums. Estelle: How is it being used in a museum? Philippe: The objective was to have an instrument that could analyze surface materials, mostly pigments in works of art such as paintings and frescoes or sculptures and non-destructively. Terra and CheMin are both destructive instruments, you need to sample and grind that sample. Which obviously would be a problem when you are analyzing a very expensive and rare work of art. (Laughs) Estelle: What are some of the more interesting works of art that you've been able to see? Philippe: So that instrument was taken into unique sites, such as King Tut's tomb or the Acropolis in Athens. Estelle: What do you see as the future of the CheMin technology? Philippe: What's unique about what we've created for this Mars project as well as for the commercial spin-off, is that there's nothing in the world, other than what we've developed, that allows doing these analyses in the field and almost instantly you get answers within minutes or tens of minutes. It really opens new horizons for some applications, whether they're scientific or industrial, so there's a lot of potential for the technique that was developed for CheMin. Estelle: Thanks for joining us! And meet us again on our next Destination Innovation. For more information about the CheMin instrument please visit NASA dot gov slash Ames. (Electronic Sounds of Data) (Musical Tones)