Mars Geochemical Analysis by Multivariate Analysis

• Activity Number: 318
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 3, 2010 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Council of Chapters
• Author(s): Samuel M. Clegg*+ and Olivier Forni and M. Darby Dyar and Roger C. Wiens and Sylvestre Maurice
• Companies: Los Alamos National Laboratory and Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements and Mount Holyoke and Los Alamos National Laboratory and Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements
• Keywords: Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) ; Multivariate Analysis ; Mars Geochemistry ; Mars Science Laboratory Rover ; Elemental Analysis

Abstract

The ChemCam instrument selected for the next NASA Mars Rover "Curiosity" includes a remote Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectrometer (LIBS). ChemCam was designed to determine the elemental composition of samples up to seven meters from the rover mast. Multivariate Analysis (MVA) techniques are used to analyze the LIBS data. Standards on the rover and in the laboratory are used to create a Partial Least Squares (PLS) calibration model that is used to determine the elemental composition of unknown samples on Mars. Principal Components Analysis (PCA), Soft Independent Modeling by Class Analogy (SIMCA) and Independent Components Analysis (ICA) are employed to geochemically identify and classify the Martian samples. The application of these MVA tools to process the ChemCam data will be presented.