Optical coatings and optical filters maker Alluxa (Santa Rosa, CA), which also develops thin-film deposition technology, developed specialty optical filters used aboard the Perseverance Rover, which landed safely on Mars on February 18, 2021. The company’s special notch filter is optimized for high performance over a wide angle range in order to provide in-band light to the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) imager.
Alluxa’s filters help enable non-contact detection and characterization of organics and minerals on Mars’ surface. Developed in conjunction with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, CA), the SHERLOC instrument, part of the Perseverance payload, is a deep-ultraviolet (DUV) resonance Raman and fluorescence spectrometer that will scan for past life on Mars and help identify rock samples for possible return to Earth.
SHERLOC operates at the end of the rover’s robotic arm, using two distinct detection modes that include two types of UV light spectroscopy, plus a versatile camera. According to Luther Beegle, principal scientist and investigator at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “It can detect an important class of carbon molecules with high sensitivity, and it also identifies minerals that provide information about ancient aqueous environments.”