Mars 2020 - geology and the conquest of space

Cathy Quantin-Nataf, Gilles Dromart and Gilles Montagnac of the Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon (LGL-TPE) are members of a research team developing one of the instruments that will go aboard the rover of the Mars 2020 Mission: the SuperCam. Watch live as NASA's next rover, Mars 2020, is built and tested in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Mars 2020 is a mission to explore the planet Mars using a rover robot developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is scheduled to be launched in Cape Canaveral, Florida in the summer of 2020. This project started in 2013 and the following year, the instruments that will be part of the payload of the rover, including the SuperCam, were selected. SuperCam is a set of several instruments that will enable scientists to study geology remotely. Using a high-resolution color camera, a laser and spectrometers, it can identify the chemical and mineral composition of rocks and soil and also detect organic compounds, on surfaces as small as a pencil tip, at a distance of between 7 and 12 meters. It will help researchers understand the geological context - based on their knowledge of geology and life on Earth - enabling them to identify environments conducive to a past or present life on planet Mars.