Pawan from Sharjah: The spectrometers on MER-A and B split the visible light into many colors which identify minerals.
How is the spectrometer on the MRO different from the ones on the two rovers?
Okay. Yeah, on the rovers there are actually three different spectrometers looking at a whole bunch of different parts of the spectrum.
One looks at, it's called the Moessbauer spectrometer, and it looks in the part of the spectrum that is particularly sensitive to iron minerals.
Another is the APXS, the alpha-proton X-ray spectrometer, and as that implies, it looks for those types of particles, X-rays,
protons, so that can see a certain part of the spectrum and identify certain kinds of minerals.
They also have a thermal-emission spectrometer, so it looks in the thermal part of the whole spectrum of wavelengths.
So they are sensitive to a certain kind of mineral. Our spectrometer is in a different wavelength.
It's in the ultraviolet to visible part of the spectrum. And we expect to be able to see minerals on the surface very, fairly clearly.
Sometimes dust can be a problem and get in the way of getting a good spectrum, but there's actually a spectrometer
with a similar wavelength in orbit around Mars. It's flown on the Mars Express Orbiter, so we know that with this particular wavelength,
we'll be able to see the surface very clearly, and detect certain types of minerals.
Our spectrometer will be a bit higher, a higher resolution, considerably higher resolution than that on the European Mars Express mission.
So we already know that we're going to be able to see the surface very well with that, with that wavelength.