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nasa's perseverance rover has been

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working on its science mission

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with the help of the super cam

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instrument a rock vaporizing laser and

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camera that examines rocks and soils

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to learn more about super cam we are

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joined by hamani kalucha

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she's the science payload uplink lead

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for super cam operations

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so super cam looks out of the big

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circular window in the white box on top

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of the mast

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and it uses spectroscopy which is just

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when light

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excites atoms in a rock and we get

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unique shifted wavelengths back to us

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and so we use a combination of lasers

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and infrared vision and that lets us do

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science even further out than the

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robotic arm

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the lasers reach 7 meters or 23 feet

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away

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and the infrared much much further and

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that's not even all we have a tiny high

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resolution camera

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and a microphone to hear mars and that's

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how we heard the helicopter

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and can you talk about some of the

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images supercam has taken

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and why they are important to scientists

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absolutely so we started by taking out

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images and spectra near the rover and as

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you can see in this image

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the laser actually blows away the dust

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and makes these small pits in the rocks

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and that lets us analyze material that's

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just below the surface of the rock

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which is what we care about and then we

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can record the sounds of the laser

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with our microphone and it tells us

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something about the hardness of the

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rocks

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and then starting sol 26 we were able to

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take pictures of these long distance

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targets like kodiak

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and that really helps the rover team

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understand where to drive next for

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more close-up analysis and these red

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circles you see

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is actually the infrared um telling us

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about the mineral content of these

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faraway outcrops

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so that's how super cam figures out more

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about the geological history of mars

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and we're so excited to see what the

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laser can do next

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thank you so much for joining us today

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hamani to get the latest updates

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follow at nasa jpl and at nasa persevere

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on social media

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and on the mission website mars.nasa.gov