Reflectance of Jezero crater floor: 1. Data processing and calibration
of the Infrared Spectrometer (IRS) on SuperCam
Abstract
The Perseverance rover, Mars 2020 mission, landed on the surface of the
Jezero Crater, on February, 18th 2021. This Martian crater is suspected
to have hosted a paleolake as evidenced by the numerous detections of
aqueously-altered phases and thus is a promising candidate for the
search for past Martian life. The SuperCam instrument, elaborated by a
consortium of American and European laboratories, plays a leading role
in this investigation thanks to its highly versatile payload providing
rapid, synergistic, fine-scale mineralogy, chemistry, and color imaging.
After its landing, the first measurements of Martian targets with the
infrared spectrometer of SuperCam (IRS) showed new instrumental
behaviors that had to be characterized and calibrated to derive unbiased
science data. The IRS radiometric response has thus been calibrated
using periodic observations of the Aluwhite SuperCam Calibration Target
(SCCT). Parasitic effects were understood and mitigated, and the
instrumental dark and noise are characterized and modeled. The
reflectance calibrated data products, provided periodically on the NASA
Planetary Data System, are corrected from the main instrumental
features.