Nasa’s Perserverance rover will use x-rays to look for Martian fossils, powered by artificial intelligence, the Independent reported.
Independent quoted the US space agency as saying that “the rover will be equipped with ‘PIXL’ (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry), which is an instrument attached to the end of Perserverence’s two-meter long arm.”
The rover's most important samples will be collected by a coring drill on the end of the arm, then stashed in metal tubes that Perseverance will deposit on the surface for return to Earth by a future mission.
While nearly every other Mars mission has included an x-ray machine, PIXL differs from those by its ability to scan rock using a focused beam of radiation.
This can be used to find what chemicals are distributed across its surface and how many there are.
“PIXL’s x-ray beam is so narrow that it can pinpoint features as small as a grain of salt. That allows us to very accurately tie chemicals we detect to specific textures in a rock," Abigail Allwood, PIXL’s principal investigator at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, told the Independent.
On Earth, warped rocks called stromatolites were made from layers of ancient bacteria; these are examples of fossilized life that the rover will look for.
As well as its x-ray, PIXL uses a hexapox – a six-legged device – which connects to its robotic arm and uses artificial intelligence to help aim.
The rover’s arm targets a rock, and then its legs make tiny movements to it can be better scanned. Some of these movements can be as small as 100 microns, or one ten thousandth of a centimetre.
PIXL measures the x-rays in ten-second bursts from a single point on a rock, before tilting and scanning again.
To produce a map the size of a stamp, it needs to repeat this process thousands of times over eight or nine hours.
Moreover, because the tempratures on Mars can change by over 38°C over the day, the metal on Perserverence’s arm can expand and contract by up to 13 millimeters.
As such, the rover will only take measurements once the sun has set.
