France on Mars aboard NASA’s Perseverance Rover

NASA’s next Mars rover has a new name: “Perseverance”. This name is reminiscent of its wheeled predecessors: Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity. Long live Perseverance, which will be launched this summer from Cape Canaveral towards the red planet! “Perseverance” has a piercing eye, the laser of the SuperCam instrument that was specially built by the United States and France to study the geology of the soil and rocks of Mars. The instrument will help scientists in their search for early, fossilized signs of microbial life on the Red Planet. SuperCam’s powerful laser sprays very small amounts of rock from a distance, emitting a spark whose light is analyzed. The instrument thus provides essential information on the composition of Martian rocks.

SuperCam is located at the top of the @NASAPersevere mast. Consisting of 5 sub-instruments developed by the @LosAlamosNatLab and a consortium of laboratories led by the @IRAP_France, it will be operated alternately from the @CNES control center.

Further Resources

IRAP Contact

  • Sylvestre Maurice, sylvestre.maurice@irap.omp.eu

More news

Juno identifies the missing auroral footprint of the moon Callisto at Jupiter’s poles

Since July 2016, the Juno mission orbiting Jupiter has been studying the properties and physical mechanisms of auroral imprints. A study recently published in the journal Nature Communications shows that […]

Deep long-period earthquakes discovered beneath Massif Central volcanoes

A recent study published in Geophysical Research Letters reveals atypical seismic signals beneath the volcanoes of the Massif Central. These signals, combined with the active presence of magma at depth, […]

Ganymede and Callisto: frozen destinies with divergent origins

Two icy moons of Jupiter, although similar in size and proximity, have radically different internal structures. A new study suggests that this dichotomy has its origins in their formation, challenging […]

Search