ESWT ( ExoMars Science Working Team ) is busy these first spring days with a series of speeches and presentations taking place in the russian capital, Moscow. Framed in a series of high level programmed meetings, their aim is to provide feedback and update the state of the mission, industry, instruments, steps and other features of the project at all levels.
Willfully every group of the payloads and industry teams are presenting the current state of their instruments and projects. As a part of the mission the spanish group which adds a valuable Raman spectrometer, unprecedented in space exploration, presented the latest advances and actual phase of the device whose flight model will be delivered for integration in the following weeks.
The head on charge of our contribution is Fernando Rull, PI of the RLS ( Raman Laser Spectrometer ), accompanied in this meeting by the instrument project manager, Andoni Moral, and the Science Operations responsible, Guillermo Lopez. The PI is visible in the image above presenting the scientific research and advancements achieved since the latest ESWT meeting, held in Stevenage (UK) by the end of 2016. Concretely, in this image the PI is presenting the RLS Calibration Target rework put in place in order to facilitate the combined science between RLS and MicrOmega (an infrared spectrometer that will analyze the same samples as RLS).
This kind of collaboration between instruments is one of several key features of the Exomars 2020 rover mission, as it will allow, for the first time in Mars, to analyze with several techniques in the same spot, samples acquired from the Martian subsurface, which will potentially preserve any organic content that might be found in them.
