Summary

Description	Our next question comes from Palak from Chicago. How will the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter find out about the ground's chemical components from orbit? Okay. Well, we have a spectrometer onboard, and as the name implies, it uses the spectrum of light to look at the surface in a range of wavelengths. You've probably seen light go through a prism and split into a range of colors.The spectrum of light in the visible wavelength actually has a whole bunch of different colors at different wavelengths. So, as light strikes the surface, depending on how that light interacts with the surface, some of it will be absorbed in one color or reflected in another color, and that tells us what the color is. Similarly, a spectrometer looks at a different part of the spectrum, not the visible part but a different part, and it looks at the spectrum that's returned. So, given mineral, you know, like quartz and calcite, they look the same, they're white, it's a little bit hard to tell them apar
Date	2005-08-18
Source	images.nasa.gov

Licensing

Public Domain (US Government Work)