NASA's new Mars Rover to search for traces of microscopic life from billions of years back

NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, which is set to land on Red Planet on February 18, 2021, will begin searching for traces of microscopic life from billions of years back. According to a press release, NASA has installed a precision X-ray device called PIXL on rover which is powered by artificial intelligence (AI). device is a lunchbox-size instrument located on end of Perseverance’s seven-foot-long robotic arm and it will help rover collect most important samples. 

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PIXL, short for Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry, has ability to scan rock using a powerful, finely-focused X-ray beam to discover where and in what quantity chemicals are distributed across surface. Abigail Allwood, PIXL's principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Sourn California, said that PIXL’s X-ray beam is so narrow that it can pinpoint features as small as a grain of salt. Allwood added that device will allow scientists to very accurately tie chemicals that y detect to specific textures in a rock. 

According to press te, rock textures will be an essential clue when deciding which samples are worth returning to Earth. While giving example of Earth’s ‘distinctively wrapped rocks called stromatolites’, US ncy said that scientists will be looking for similar ‘ancient layers of bacteria’. 

PIXL relies on more than a precision X-ray beam alone. NASA informed that device also needs hexapod, a device featuring six mechanical legs connecting PIXL to robotic arm and guided by artificial intelligence to get most accurate aim. Once rover’s arm is placed close to a rock, PIXL will n be using its camera and lasers to calculate distance. 

Allwood said, “ hexapod figures out on its own how to point and extend its legs even closer to a rock target. It's kind of like a little robot who has made itself at home on end of rover's arm”. 

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‘PIXL is a night owl’ 

PIXL can measure X-rays in a 10-seconds burst from a single point on a rock before instrument tilts and takes ar measurement. In a bid to produce one of those post-stamp-size chemical maps, device may need to do same process thousands of times over course of as many a eight or nine hours. given timeframe is partly what makes PIXL’s microscopic adjustments so critical. 

Furrmore, as temperature on Mars changes by more than 38 degrees Celsius over course of day, metal on Perseverance's robotic arm to expand and contract by as much as a half-inch. In a bid to minimise rmal contractions PIXL has to contend with, instrument will conduct its science after Sunsets.

While calling PIXL ‘a night owl’, Allwood said, " temperature is more stable at night, and that also lets us work at a time when re's less activity on rover”. 

(Ims: NASA JPL/Website) 

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