The ChemCam team awarded by the Explorers Club

News

20 April 2022

The engineering team of the ChemCam instrument on the Mars rover Curiosity has received a Citation of Merit from the The Explorers Club academic society, which promotes scientific exploration and study in situ. ChemCam is a tool with a laser, a camera and spectrometers that all work together to determine the chemical and mineral composition of rocks and soils. The team was nominated for keeping ChemCam operational on Mars for the past 10 years and for its hard work to restore its use following a high-voltage power instability in 2021. The investigation of the problem was carried out by Henry Séran and Yann Parot from IRAP, and the solution implemented by the whole IRAP-CNES-LANL team.

The Curiosity rover equipped with the ChemCam instrument © NASA

IRAP Contact

  • Olivier Gasnault, olivier.gasnault@irap.omp.eu

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