Perseverance rover sends back sounds of zapping rocks on Mars
SuperCam instrument in action on Mars, NASA illustration.
New audio returned from the rover's SuperCam includes the popping sound of the instrument as it zaps rocks with its laser. It's the first time we've heard what it sounds like when a laser interacts with a rock on another planet.
The instrument was developed by a joint team from both the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales in France.
Capturing audio is just one of the SuperCam's capabilities. It's a 12-pound sensor head on the rover's mast, or neck, that can analyze the intriguing geology on Mars in five different ways. The instrument includes a camera, laser and spectrometers that can identify the chemical and mineral composition of rocks and soil. (Full Story)
Hear NASA's Mars Perseverance rover zap its SuperCam laser
The rover's SuperCam instrument was jointly developed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico alongside French research laboratories. Ultimately, it delivered the data to a French Space Agency operations center in Toulouse.
Roger Wiens, principal investigator for the SuperCam instrument from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said: "It is amazing to see SuperCam working so well. When we first dreamed up this instrument eight years ago, we worried that we were being way too ambitious. Now it is up there working like a charm." (Full Story)
The Perseverance rover has recorded the 1st laser sound on Mars. It's a 'snap!' not a 'pew!'
A close-up view of the rock target named "Máaz" from the SuperCam instrument, NASA image.
SuperCam fired on a target named Máaz, the Navajo word for Mars, on March 2. (Perseverance is exploring a part of Jezero the team has dubbed Canyon de Chelly, after a national monument on Navajo land in northeastern Arizona.)
The SuperCam observations allowed the team to determine that Máaz has a basaltic composition. Basalts are igneous, or volcanic, rocks that are common on Mars as well as Earth. But it's unclear at the moment if Máaz itself is volcanic, said SuperCam principal investigator Roger Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy facility in New Mexico.
It's also possible that Máaz "is a sedimentary rock composed of igneous grains that were washed downriver into Jezero Lake and cemented together," Wiens said during today's update. (Full Story)
Finding the needles in ‘big data’ haystacks
SmartTensors can make massive data streams understandable, LANL illustration.
A seemingly bottomless ocean of “big data” has flooded our world. Bits and bytes are pouring in from sources ranging from satellites and MRI scans to massive computer simulations and seismic-sensor networks, from security cameras to smartphones, from genome sequencing of SARS-Cov-2 to COVID-19 test results, from social networks to texts zipping from phone to phone.
Making sense of this ever-increasing racket is vital to national security, economic stability, individual health and practically every branch of science – and the job is getting easier, thanks to the SmartTensors artificial intelligence tool we have developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Full Story)
New Los Alamos generator system delivers large radiation doses directly to cancer cells
Cancer tissue being bombarded by targeted alpha particles, LANL graphic.
Improved options for cancer treatment are on the way, thanks to a new system developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory for producing alpha-emitting medical radioisotopes intended to target and overpower diseased tissue while sparing the healthy tissue around it.
“The new system is based on a uranium-230/thorium-226 pairing, where the thorium-226 is supplied in a form suitable for medical applications,” said Michael Fassbender, the lead researcher at Los Alamos. “The thorium-226 emits multiple alpha particles as it decays, delivering a powerful blow to diseased cells. This is similar to actinium-225, another promising alpha therapy isotope. The DOE Isotope Program is committed to making multiple options, or a variety of radioisotopes available to accelerate the development of therapeutics that could be used to treat different cancers.” (Full Story)
Physics experiment boosts evidence for sterile neutrinos
MiniBooNE at Fermilab, LANL image.
Analysis of results from an experiment called MiniBooNE at Fermilab has provided yet more evidence that particles called “sterile neutrinos” could indeed exist, supporting results from a 1990s Los Alamos National Laboratory experiment that indicated an update to the Standard Model of physics might be in order.
“We believe that this paper vindicates the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) results and that the community accepts that both LSND and MiniBooNE observed more events than expected,” said William Louis of Los Alamos National Laboratory, a member of the MiniBooNE collaboration. “The question is what is causing the excess: Is it a Standard Model background that no one has thought of, or is it a new Beyond the Standard Model process involving sterile neutrinos? (Full Story)
Also from the Reporter this week:
HAWC Gamma Ray Observatory discovers origin of highest-energy cosmic rays in the Galaxy
Infrared image of the dust clouds in the Cocoon region, HAWC image.
Along-time question in astrophysics appears to finally be answered, thanks to a collection of large, high-tech water tanks on a mountainside in Mexico. The High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) data shows that the highest-energy cosmic rays come not from supernovae, but from star clusters.
“The origin of the highest-energy cosmic rays in the galaxy has been an open question in astrophysics for more than 60 years,” said Patrick Harding, a Los Alamos National Laboratory astrophysicist doing research using HAWC. “Very few regions of the galaxy have both the power to produce high-energy particles and the necessary environments to boost those particles to the petaelectronVolt (PeV) energies that are seen in the highest-energy cosmic rays. (Full Story)
And
Lab volunteer Matt Williams mentors high school robotics team participants
Carla Pacheco, Matt Williams and Shayna Gomez at UNM-Los Alamos, LANL photo.
Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher Matt Williams says his small-town high school required just one STEM class to graduate: math/science. If you could add and subtract — and spell the word “science” — you passed.
Williams never thought much about robotics until he became a father.
Although he was a whiz with supercomputers, he began to fret that he didn’t know anything about electronics, didn’t want his kids to grow up not knowing about it. At the invitation of his daughter’s teacher, he plunged into Lego robotics at Chamisa Elementary School in Los Alamos and soon became a classroom volunteer and helper at science nights and science fairs. (Full Story)
LANL touts work with NM small businesses
Even as many small businesses in New Mexico struggled as the economic grip of the pandemic tightened, Los Alamos National Laboratory upped its spending with small businesses in the state by 30%, according to an economic impact report released by the lab last month.
LANL increased spending with New Mexico small businesses by nearly $125 million to $413 million during fiscal year 2020, which ended Sept. 30, 2020, and covered roughly the first six months of the COVID-19 outbreak.
In all, the lab reported having 7,315 projects with small businesses in the state, 202 more than the year before. (Full Story)
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