NASA's Mars 2020 Rover is now ready to be launched in July. The agency's most complex and powerful piece of science equipment that will soon reach planet Mars was reportedly more updated and advanced with the help of its new feature called 'Super Cam.'
Mars 2020 rover has a laser that can zap rocks and a new 'Super Cam'
On Feb. 7, NASA's Mars Exploration Program announced that Mars 2020 Rover had a newly-installed device that will provide more extensive knowledge about the Red planet. The tool called 'Super Cam' is designed to analyze rocks and minerals that can be found on Mars.
Super Cam is evolved from Curiosity rover's ChemCam that will use artificial intelligence to seek out rock targets. Comparingly, this technology will also allow a more accurate and precise target for smaller rocks. Though the Super Cam can be similar to ChemCam, one major thing that differentiates the two devices is Super Cam's most powerful laser beam.
The said laser beam is so powerful that it can destroy and zap rocks on planet Mars. According to NASA, the laser beam can "heat materials it impacts to around 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit (10,000 degrees Celsius) - a method called laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, or LIBS - and vaporizes it."
This laser is positioned at the top or on the 'head' of the Mars 2020 Rover and can vaporize rocks even from 20 feet away. Vaporizing rocks are important in the study of NASA since, after vaporizing it, the materials can then be analyzed for particular elements or chemical compounds.
Super Cam also includes a green laser that can determine the molecular composition of surface materials. This laser will allow and cause some minerals and carbon-based chemicals even to emit light, or fluoresce.
"SuperCam's light sensor also features a shutter that can close as quickly as 100 nanoseconds at a time - so fast that very few photons of light will enter it," said NASA.
Mars 2020 rover has an audio recording
Aside from the powerful laser beam installed in the Mars 2020 Rover, the device also has a recording microphone that will allow the device's handlers to listen and note the various rocks that Rover will vaporize.
"The microphone serves a practical purpose by telling us something about our rock targets from a distance," Sylvestre Maurice of the Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetary Science said in a statement. "But we can also use it to directly record the sound of the Martian landscape or the rover's mast swiveling."
The audio equipped on the device can be NASA's highlights of Mars exploration since the agency can now input audio to the full-color video recorded by the Mars Rover.
Mars 2020 rover launching window
Starting on July 17 up to Aug. 5, Mars 2020 Rover will begin to launch at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The scheduled landing of this device is on Feb. 18, 2021.