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Published May 17, 2024 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Radiation-induced alteration of apatite on the surface of Mars: first in situ observations with SuperCam Raman onboard Perseverance

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology

Abstract

Planetary exploration relies considerably on mineral characterization to advance our understanding of the solar system, the planets and their evolution. Thus, we must understand past and present processes that can alter materials exposed on the surface, affecting space mission data. Here, we analyze the first dataset monitoring the evolution of a known mineral target in situ on the Martian surface, brought there as a SuperCam calibration target onboard the Perseverance rover. We used Raman spectroscopy to monitor the crystalline state of a synthetic apatite sample over the first 950 Martian days (sols) of the Mars2020 mission. We note significant variations in the Raman spectra acquired on this target, specifically a decrease in the relative contribution of the Raman signal to the total signal. These observations are consistent with the results of a UV-irradiation test performed in the laboratory under conditions mimicking ambient Martian conditions. We conclude that the observed evolution reflects an alteration of the material, specifically the creation of electronic defects, due to its exposure to the Martian environment and, in particular, UV irradiation. This ongoing process of alteration of the Martian surface needs to be taken into account for mineralogical space mission data analysis.

Copyright and License

© The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Acknowledgement

We thank the Mars 2020 Science and Engineering teams for their work supporting the scientific research presented in this manuscript. Several contributors are supported by CNES for their work with SuperCam on Perseverance (Mars2020).TF was supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) through the ASI/INAF agreement no. 2023-3-HH. OB and SB (IMPMC) acknowledge funding from the CNRS and Sorbonne Université and thank the IMPMC Cellule Projet for the help in building the laboratory setup used in this study.

Funding

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

Data Availability

SuperCam data are made available on the PDS. Laboratory data will be made available upon request addressed to the corresponding author (Elise Clavé, elise.clave@dlr.de).

Contributions

All authors contributed to operations on the instrument on Mars, data analysis and interpretation, and reviewed the manuscript. O.B, S.B. and C.R. conducted the experiments in the laboratory. E.C. processed the data, drafted the manuscript. A.C., S.M. and R.C.W. supervised the project and contributed to data interpretation.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Additional details

Funding

Centre National d'Études Spatiales
Agenzia Spaziale Italiana
2023-3-HH
National Institute for Astrophysics
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
German Rectors' Conference
Projekt DEAL

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Caltech groups
Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)