Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
Talk summary: The Curiosity rover has been exploring Gale crater since 2012, and its successor Perseverance has been exploring in and around Jezero crater since 2021. I will provide an overview of the landing sites and goals of both missions and their key discoveries to date. I will go into extra detail on the ChemCam and SuperCam instruments, how we zap Mars rocks to tell what they are made of, and our ongoing efforts to improve the accuracy of those measurements.
Bio: Ryan Anderson is a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. He studied astrophysics at the University of Michigan and earned his PhD in astronomy with a focus on planetary science from Cornell University. From 2012-2025 he was a physical scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona. He has been involved in Mars rover missions since joining the Mars Exploration Rover Pancam team in 2007. Ryan is currently on the science teams for the ChemCam instrument on the Curiosity rover and the SuperCam instrument on the Perseverance rover, where he specializes in the analysis of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) data. Ryan's geologic mapping work and advocacy played a role in the selection of Gale crater as the landing site for Curiosity, and he was involved in the pre-landing mapping and characterization of the Jezero crater landing site for Perseverance.
Talk summary: The Curiosity rover has been exploring Gale crater since 2012, and its successor Perseverance has been exploring in and around Jezero crater since 2021. I will provide an overview of the landing sites and goals of both missions and their key discoveries to date. I will go into extra detail on the ChemCam and SuperCam instruments, how we zap Mars rocks to tell what they are made of, and our ongoing efforts to improve the accuracy of those measurements.
Bio: Ryan Anderson is a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. He studied astrophysics at the University of Michigan and earned his PhD in astronomy with a focus on planetary science from Cornell University. From 2012-2025 he was a physical scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona. He has been involved in Mars rover missions since joining the Mars Exploration Rover Pancam team in 2007. Ryan is currently on the science teams for the ChemCam instrument on the Curiosity rover and the SuperCam instrument on the Perseverance rover, where he specializes in the analysis of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) data. Ryan's geologic mapping work and advocacy played a role in the selection of Gale crater as the landing site for Curiosity, and he was involved in the pre-landing mapping and characterization of the Jezero crater landing site for Perseverance.
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View the video without audio description: https://youtu.be/BthjBdP2mxE
Read more about how Patrick Teyssonneyre MBA 19 and his colleagues at Xinterra are using AI to innovate on materials R&D: https://bit.ly/4oRRdiC
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