Deep UV Raman Spectroscopy, from Earth to Mars and Back Again

Deep UV Raman spectroscopy has made significant strides from large lab-based systems to compact, highly ruggedized instruments for planetary exploration such as the SHERLOC instrument on the Mars Perseverance rover. Bhartia will cover the benefits of fusing deep UV fluorescence and Raman spectroscopy, how it was implemented as a planetary instrument, and a summary of key observations the SHERLOC team has made over the last 1000 sols on Mars.

These capabilities not only provide support for samples to return to earth, the engineering development and science efforts advance instrumentation for future planetary instruments, including support of human spaceflight, as well as for use on Earth. In addition to developing a series of analog instruments for SHERLOC and future planetary science efforts, compact, portable deep UV Raman/fluorescence instruments are now opening new research opportunities and industrial applications in a wide range of terrestrial settings that will be presented here, such as microbial detection and analysis, to understand physiological processes and pathogenic protein generation.

About the presenter
Rohit Bhartia, Ph.D., joined Photon Systems in 2020 as the chief technology officer and was previously at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory developing instruments for space/life science since 1998. For the last 10 years, he was the deputy principal investigator on the SHERLOC Mars instrument from concept to mission ops. Bhartia earned his doctorate in geological sciences and couples his highly developed skills in spectroscopy, electro- optical systems design, and software data acquisition and analysis, to an extensive background in microbiology/chemistry with over 50 published papers. With his system level and data-driven approach, he is the driving force behind new commercial instruments and next generation instruments for water, pharma, life science, nanotech, agriculture, and more.