ChemCam Status

ChemCam Status
October, 2008

The ChemCam Engineering Model (EM) is operating in the rover test bed at JPL. It was returned to LANL over the summer to repair an issue with the memory chips. All operations are currently functioning in its tests at JPL.

The flight model of the Mast Unit was delivered from France to Los Alamos in July, and has been functioning well in tests here. The optical requirements have been verified, including optical transmission for LIBS, laser pulse duration and beam profiles, and remote micro-imager (RMI) flat field and exposure times. The autofocus function has been studied in detail, including the offsets needed for LIBS and RMI best focus, and stepper motor backlash corrections.

The body unit (BU) optical train has been assembled and tested over temperatures, and end-to-end LIBS tests have been done. The instrument meets its performance projections given at the critical design review, which is very good news! Final alignment and staking of the optical system is taking place the first week of October.

The body unit electronics took some hits in June. A spare Data Processing electronics board had to be built up and the field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) had to be reprogrammed to reduce power consumption. In addition, several weeks were spent solving a problem with memory chips. These issues have now been overcome. Currently the flight FPGAs are being installed and the boards are nearly ready for close-out.

The rover-mounted calibration target has been assembled. It contains four ceramic standards intended to mimic sedimentary compositions on Mars, four glass standards intended for igneous rock calibrations, one graphite sample to aid in carbon emission line identification, and a titanium target for wavelength calibration.

The next couple of months will be busy with final body unit assembly, vibration test of the body unit, thermal testing of both units, and LIBS calibrations. Delivery to JPL is planned for December.

Upon delivery to JPL, electromagnetic interference tests and planetary protection bakeouts will be undertaken. The Mast Unit will then be integrated with the rover mast. The software commands will be validated. Mast pointing accuracies will be checked and a camera model will be developed for the RMI. After this, ChemCam will be integrated into the rover itself.