Research that supports quantitative assessment of mars' surface as a potential habitat for life, past or present, is of critical importance to the future of NASA's mars exploration program. In this…

Research that supports quantitative assessment of mars' surface as a potential habitat for life, past or present, is of critical importance to the future of NASA's mars exploration program. In this proposal, we present a research program to support improvements in our understanding of chemical composition of martian materials as measured in situ using the technique of laserinduced breakdown spectroscopy (libs). Through knowledge of composition and mineralogy inferred from its results, we can better characterize geological features on mars, including those that support interpretations related to the role of aqueous processes. In service of these mars program goals, this proposal seeks to make improvements in the accuracy of chemical analyses derived from libs data, such as those from the chemcam instrument on the curiosity rover. To this end, we will use transfer learning techniques to address three fundamental objectives: 1. Understand the effects of variable ablation and collection angles on the accuracy of chemical analyses derived from libs. 2. Develop corrections for variations in spectral resolution, pulse energy, instrument drift, signal to noise, and sample preparation across difference libs instruments to facilitate inter-laboratory comparisons and cross-calibrations. 3. Implement a computational method to correct for variable distance between target and laser based on in situ analyses of dust on mars. This fundamental research is directly relevant to the mars fundamental research program because IT provides novel, enhanced algorithms to support and improve quantitative chemical analyses of martian materials. IT is significant because IT will improve the breadth and accuracy of chemical analyses from chemcam and future libs instruments, enhancing our understanding of geochemical and geological processes on the surface of mars.