Story of a Martian evening at the Toulouse space center where the SuperCam laser camera is piloted
At the Toulouse space center, every other week, engineers and SuperCam pilot researchers. The laser camera is a major instrument of the American rover Perseverance for the exploration of the planet Mars.
To explore Mars, it is better to reserve your evening or even a good part of the night. Since February 2021, it has been the lot of researchers and engineers from FOCSE, the French operations center for science and exploration, based at the Toulouse space center (CNES, National Center for Space Studies). In conjunction with JPL, the NASA (American space agency) laboratory dedicated to robotic missions and based in Pasadena (California), they order SuperCam every other week. A major instrument of the Perseverance rover, the laser camera is participating in the Mars2020 mission to search for traces of life.
For several hours, the team goes to receive the instrument’s health data, those of the operations that start the day before and prepare the orders for the following shots. All this while having to take into account the hours of passage of the satellites that transmit the data, the energy available for the rover, its position in relation to the Sun, its possible movement and other movements of the instruments. No question of programming a laser shot while the rover deploys its robotic arm or ignoring the dust generated by the Raman laser if a photo needs to be taken.
French names for targets
On November 23, operations started a little before 4 p.m. in Toulouse, early in the morning in California and in the middle of the night on Mars. They will last until 2 a.m. More than forty stakeholders are brought together by teleconference and will take turns to produce an operations plan by establishing the orders of priority. In recent weeks, the array of Martian targets has taken on French accents. Pont du Loup, Melle, Chasteuil: after names taken from the Navajo language, NASA draws its inspiration from France, from places, rivers, sites of which no one can claim ownership
Tonight, on the program “Sol” 272 and 273 (a day on Mars lasts on average 24 hours and 39 minutes) and Clément Royer, tactical scientific manager, will not spare his teammates. He selected 7 laser firing targets for SuperCam, a record. Antoine Charpentier, the engineer in charge of the technical application, supported by the experienced operator Laurent Peret – present since 2012 with operations on Curiosity -, will have to check what is possible. They are eight to take turns in this position, four women and four men.
“We are stronger as a team”
The atmosphere is serious despite a few jokes. “I always push the cursor to get the maximum amount of data. And there, I need calibration measurements because the instrument varies with time and temperature, ”explains the scientist.
“SuperCam is very complex. We are discovering new combinations every day and our programming hours are never a long quiet river ”, underlines Eric Lorigny, head of operations for French instruments on Mars for CNES.
Each evening has its share of difficulties, pressure, music too. “Americans always start the meeting with a song, it relaxes. They have a very playful side, they dress up for Halloween or International Pirate Day. But they are also very respectful of schedules, if the meeting is scheduled for 12:29, you should not arrive at 12:30. We are attached to other things, meals for example, ”says Eric Lorigny. In Toulouse, scientists appreciate being alongside CNES operators. “We encourage the same thing at home, but we need to share, we are stronger as a team”, adds Sylvestre Maurice, scientific manager of SuperCam.
Sylvestre Maurice: “Supercam, Perseverance’s most used instrument”
Already father of the first laser camera sent to Mars (ChemCam of the Curiosity rover for the MSL mission), Sylvestre Maurice is the scientific manager of SuperCam. Astronomer at IRAP (Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology (Toulouse III-Paul-Sabatier University), he also participates in command operations from the Toulouse space center.
You have been piloting the ChemCam laser camera on the Curiosity rover for almost ten years. Do you like this experience for planning SuperCam?
It is not easier and I am no less worried than before! SuperCam is a really difficult instrument, we are still discovering things today but it is still an exciting challenge. Its five techniques work super well (imager, spectroscopy, LIBS laser, Raman lacer, microphone), SuperCam is the rover’s most used instrument, we are already approaching 100,000 shots. But we also get tired, with ChemCam it gives us two alternating guards to manage, it’s non-stop. NASA is launching a new challenge since it will ask us to condenser our operating times in five hours. The interest is to optimize the use of the rover to give it even more possibilities to do science. The Mars2020 mission has three years to make a first deposit of samples. After six months, three holes were drilled, we are right on target.
Has Mars become a French specialty?
Three rovers (the Americans Curiosity and Perseverance, the Chinese Zhurong) and a lander (InSight) are exploring on Mars and we are piloting three here in Toulouse. As for the eight probes that orbit Mars, we are in the seven of them. France is the most represented nation for scientific research on Mars. We have the know-how of instruments born from the creativity of our laboratories and the strength of CNES to ensure access to space.
We are also present in the next missions: ExoMars with ESA, the Japanese MMX mission to return samples from the moons of Mars, the Airbus ERO sample return vehicle. We are coming to the peak of an era of projects on Mars.