Mars Rover technology tested out on billion-year-old highland rock

Researchers from the University of St Andrews are trialing instruments to be used on the European Mars Rover.

The work, featured on the BBC Sky at Night programme, is imaging and analysing one billion-year-old geological formations that are analogous to those on Mars to advance the science capabilities of the rover which is scheduled to launch in 2028.

Led by Dr Clare Cousins, Reader in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, researchers have already been on fieldwork in North West Scotland with two emulator instruments representing the Panoramic Camera (PanCam) and Enfys IR Spectrometer instruments on the European Space Agency ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover payload.

Using one billion-year-old mudstones, unique to the NW Scottish coastline, researchers can understand how the geological capture of ancient microbial life in these sediments changes the chemistry of the rocks and how these changes can be detected using Mars rover instruments. These are the same kinds of rocks we find in ancient terrains on Mars when the environment was much more agreeable to life.

Dr Cousins said: “Our Understanding of Mars is rooted in geological knowledge inherited from the Earth. Rock formations here are vital testing grounds for new instruments that are destined for the Martian surface. It’s hoped these instruments – PanCam and Enfys – will allow the ExoMars rover team to identify those geological formations at the landing site that not only betray once habitable water-rich environments that existed billions of years ago, but also rocks that are excellent at preserving the long-gone remnants of microbial life.”

PanCam and Enfys are both UK-led instruments and the work is funded by the UK Space Agency. The University of St Andrews is also part of a larger project in partnership with the University of Western Ontario for their Canadian Space Agency project to test these same instruments at the Ries impact crater site in Germany.