Mars Exploration Rover> Science Instruments: A Geology Toolkit

Science Instruments: A Geology Toolkit Like a human field geologist, each Mars Exploration Rover has the capabilities to scout its surroundings for interesting rocks and soils, to move to
those targets and to examine their composition and structure.

Spirit and Opportunity have identical suites of five scientific instruments:

• a panoramic camera provided by JPL;
• a miniature thermal emission spectrometer from Arizona State University, Tempe;
  
• a Moessbauer spectrometer from the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany;
• an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer from Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, also in Mainz, Germany;
  
• and a microscopic imager from JPL.
  

These are augmented by a rock abrasion tool from Honeybee Robotics, New York, N.Y., for removing the weathered surfaces of rocks to expose fresh interiors for examination.

The payload also includes magnetic targets provided by Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, to catch samples of martian dust for examination.

The spectrometers, microscopic imager and abrasion tool share a turret at the end of a robotic arm provided by Alliance Spacesystems Inc., Pasadena, Calif.