Enhancement of JMARS

JMARS (Java Mission-planning and Analysis for Remote Sensing) is a geospatial information system (GIS) developed by ASU's Mars Space Flight Facility to provide mission planning and data analysis tools for NASA planetary mission data to scientists, students of all ages, and to the general public [1]. It provides convenient accessing and visualization of imagery data coming from various Mars missions such as MGS TES, Odyssey THEMIS, MER Mini-TES, and MRO HiRISE. NASA’s new mission, Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)/Curiosity has a number of instruments on board for measuring the abundance of chemical elements in Martian soil and rock samples. One of these instruments is APXS (Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer). APXS exposes the rock/soil samples to alpha particles and X-rays emitted during the radioactive decay of the element curium [2]. Another MSL instrument named ChemCam uses laser pulses to vaporize thin layers of Martian rock and soil samples up to 7 meters (23 feet) away. ChemCam instrument uses laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) along with a remote micro-imager (RMI) to provide chemical compositional analysis from a distance [3-4].