What kind of Laser carries the Mars rover Curiosity???

[Gordinflas]

Hello, I have been searching for info about the laser that is used by Curiosity Mars Rover to blast rocks. They say it shoots 30 pulses in 10 second with 1 million watts power.

Does anyone knows how can such a low powered device produce such a powerful beam?

Curiosity Rover Fires First Laser Beam at Martian Rock | Wired Science | Wired.com

 

[Cheech]

"such a low powered device "
its powered by plutonium man... come on
like 1.21 gigawatts

 

[Laser Smith]

What makes you think 1 million watts is low power?

 

[AUS]

I think I read somewhere it was a pumped YAG laser. I know if fires high energy short duration pulses. I've seen it mentioned online somewhere.... I'll look again.

 

[AUS]

Yep, here it is:

From ChemCam: under the hood:
""We changed the laser medium from Nd:YAG to a rod of Nd:KGW, or neodymium-doped potassium-gadolinium tungstate, which was longitudinally pumped by a 700 W diode stack," Durand explained. "The wide spectral acceptance of the Nd:KGW rod provides very small absorption variations over broad temperature ranges. This change allows both the diode and the rod to be conductively cooled, and to run under the large temperature ranges expected on Mars.""

From Wikipedia: Curiosity rover - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The LIBS instrument can target a rock or soil sample from up to 7 metres (23 ft) away, vaporizing a small amount of it with about 50 to 75 5-nanosecond pulses from a 1067 nm infrared laser and then observing the spectrum of the light emitted by the vaporized rock."

 

[Gordinflas]

Thank you, good info!