University of Western Ontario

Published purpose

The surface of Mars has been under exploration by landers and orbiters for decades. From the planetary geologists point of view, there are three critical pieces of information that enable us to determine the rock type: mineralogy, chemical composition, and textures. Mineralogy is the most important of these. Most rover instruments measure chemical information from minerals. It is desirable to deploy an instrument to obtain complementary crystal structural information from minerals. The project will enable continued development and testing of a Miniaturized in situ X-ray Diffractometer for Mineralogical Characterization of Planetary Surfaces (ISXRD), to perform in situ analysis on intact Mars-analogue samples on Earth, with the goal of eventual deployment on Mars. Furthermore, another objective is to develop a Mars-relevant sample collection for testing purposes.