NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been mapping minerals on the red Planet for the last 16 years with the help of CRISM
Surface of Mars (Photo: NASA) Scientists released the first pieces of the multispectral maps made by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) June 29, 2022, according to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been mapping minerals on the red planet for the last 16 years with the help of CRISM.
Anyone can access these maps from NASA’s ‘Planetary Data System website’. It has managed to map 86 per cent of Mars’ surface with its multispectral mode, detecting nearly all of the minerals on the surface.
CRISM is a visible-infrared spectrometer whose primary goal is to look for mineralogical evidence for past water on the surface and subsurface of Mars.
The coverage goal for the multispectral mode was 80 per cent, owing to the limited lifetime of the coolers needed by its infrared detector. But it has managed to exceed that goal.
The hyper spectral mode, which uses the wavelengths from the visible and near-infrared (VNIR) detector, doesn’t require cryogenic cooling and has attained more than 99 per cent coverage.
“For the first Mars year of MRO’s mission, every other orbit was restricted to nadir pointing (placing directly below a particular location). This was done to allow early rapid accumulation of multispectral mapping data. Subsequently, we eliminated that restriction, Scott Murchie, the principal investigator for CRISM,” told Down To Earth.
We did give preferences to those regions that were known to have the most diverse mineralogy, he added.
The data gathered by CRISM over the last 16 years is invaluable for numerous research avenues and missions to Martian surface.
For example, NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, which saw the Perseverance rover land on the surface of Mars, heavily relied on data gathered by CRISM.
“NASA used a community-based process in which anyone could propose a landing site for Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) on Mars,” Murchie elaborated.
The cryocoolers onboard the MRO completed their life cycles in 2017. Since then, the scientists working on CRISM have been focusing on building coverage in the VNIR hyperspectral map.
They are now focused on correcting the two sets of mapping data for differences in illumination and atmospheric conditions and releasing them to NASA’s Planetary Data System.
Readily available and accessible data will help planetary scientists, geologists, and meteorologists conduct research. It will also increase the prospects of humanity understanding the universe more easily.
When asked which discovery made by CRISM excited him the most, Murchie said:
That would have to be the discovery that the Jezero crater preserves a habitable environment. Cutting-edge analyses of CRISM data is used to select sites within the crater for collecting the rock samples.
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