The CRISM instrument was taken by the Mars MRO when it was sent to the red planet. Maps of Mars are produced by CRISM. It has been an enormous success, but sadly, the loss of the last cryocooler made it difficult to conduct limited observations.

The last image of the surface of Mars will be created by CRISM and will be released by NASA over the next six months.

“It’s effectively a whole new data set that will fuel a second wave of discoveries about Mars’ surface composition.”

Scott Murchie, CRISM’s principal investigator, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).

A new map will cover most of the planet. It will reveal the locations of many important minerals in 72 different colors. Evidence of Mars' watery past can be found in the location of certain minerals. The map will help plan future missions and choose the best places for rovers to visit.

Jezero Crater on Mars was the landing site for NASA's Mars 2020 rover. The colours show surface minerals detected by CRISM, which helped identify the crater as a desirable landing site. The green colour represents carbonates, which are good at preserving fossils. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
Jezero Crater on Mars was the landing site for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover. The colours in this image show surface minerals detected by CRISM, which helped identify the crater as a desirable landing site. The green colour represents carbonates, which are good at preserving fossils. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

The first part of the new map has been obtained. The final version of the map contains over 50,000 strips. NASA released 48 of the tiles in June and they cover five of the most interesting regions on the planet.

The final map is the first of its kind. The data from the mission has never been put together but mission scientists had a project in the back of their minds. Frank Seelos is a planetary scientist at APL and lead on the CRISM mapping project. It took us a long time to get to the point where we had enough data and the right tools to make it worthwhile.

A near-global map of Mars, composed of nearly 51,000 mapping strips mosaicked into 1,764 tiles. The grid overlay shows the boundaries of the individual tiles. An additional 100 tiles in each polar region — not included here — are being processed separately. The map shows familiar large-scale surface brightness patterns, largely governed by the distribution of bright-red iron oxide-bearing dust. Darker, relatively dust-free regions consist of impact-fragmented crustal rock and wind-blown sand. The Nili Fossae region, where the Mars 2020 (Perseverance) rover is exploring Jezero Crater near the top-right quadrant, is indicated by the yellow box in the center-right part of the map. It's also the location of the leading image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Johns Hopkins APL
A near-global map of Mars, composed of nearly 51,000 mapping strips mosaicked into 1,764 tiles. The grid overlay shows the boundaries of the individual tiles. An additional 100 tiles in each polar region — not included here — are being processed separately. The map shows familiar large-scale surface brightness patterns, largely governed by the distribution of bright-red iron oxide-bearing dust. Darker, relatively dust-free regions consist of impact-fragmented crustal rock and wind-blown sand. The Nili Fossae region, where the Mars 2020 (Perseverance) rover is exploring Jezero Crater near the top-right quadrant, is indicated by the yellow box in the center-right part of the map. It’s also the location of the leading image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Johns Hopkins APL

CRISM has made about 33,000 high-resolution images over the years and they have helped identify landing sites for rover missions and the future Mars Sample Return mission. About 83,000 lower-resolution mapping strips were gathered while it was doing that work. The team is building a map out of those strips.

This four-panel montage shows different aspects of the tile mosaic composed of data collected over the Nili Fossae region from the yellow rectangle in the larger image preceding it. Top left: An approximate natural colour rendering of Mars’ surface. Top right: Synthetic colour composite showing variation in iron mineralogy, with iron oxide appearing in red, iron-bearing minerals (e.g., olivine, high-calcium pyroxene) in blue, and low-calcium pyroxene in cyan. Bottom left: Water-altered iron- and magnesium-rich phyllosilicate clays, as well as some carbonates, with warm colours indicating a stronger feature. Bottom right: Synthetic colour composite showing the variation of unaltered igneous minerals, with olivine (red), low-calcium pyroxene (green), high-calcium pyroxene (blue) and mineral mixtures (other non-primary colours). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Johns Hopkins APL
This four-panel montage shows different aspects of the tile mosaic composed of data collected over the Nili Fossae region from the yellow rectangle in the larger image preceding it. Top left: An approximate natural colour rendering of Mars’ surface. Top right: Synthetic colour composite showing variation in iron mineralogy, with iron oxide appearing in red, iron-bearing minerals (e.g., olivine, high-calcium pyroxene) in blue, and low-calcium pyroxene in cyan. Bottom left: Water-altered iron- and magnesium-rich phyllosilicate clays, as well as some carbonates, with warm colours indicating a stronger feature. Bottom right: Synthetic colour composite showing the variation of unaltered igneous minerals, with olivine (red), low-calcium pyroxene (green), high-calcium pyroxene (blue), and mineral mixtures (other non-primary colours). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Johns Hopkins APL

Powerful computing resources are required to process this amount of data into a cohesive map. It takes time to account for environmental conditions and differences between images. The process for an individual tile might take just five hours in some exceptional cases, but sometimes it will take over a day. It could take a computer cluster a month to build a map of the planet.

Future discoveries about Mars will be influenced by the map for a long time. Scott Murchie is a planetary scientist at the APL and CRISM's principal investigator. One of the objectives of the next MRO is for the HiRISE camera to go back and image in colour the hundreds of new high-science priority spots we are finding on the map.

CRISM is functioning in a limited way It can't do visible light operations without a cryocooler. Right now, it is on deck and on the verge of being taken offline in a few months.

By several years, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has exceeded its planned mission lengths. NASA wants to keep the space program going through the late 2020s. NASA said they can rely on stellar navigation to maintain the spacecraft's orientation because of its aging gyros. Over 67,000 images of the surface of Mars have been captured. As long as MRO is running, we will still be able to see stunning light images of Mars.

The Mars Express Orbiter is carrying its own instrument. Near-IR can be used to map mineral concentrations on the Martian surface.

Frank Seelos, the lead on the CRISM mapping project, points out that the mission has been a success and that the instrument doesn't need to contribute any more than it already is.

The warranty on this thing expired a long time ago. The CRISM investigation has been going on for a long time, and it's amazing that we were able to take data for so long. The release of these tiles is a sign of the instrument's legacy.

CRISM has left its mark on multiple missions to Mars. This is an image of Mars' Santa Maria Crater from Orbit. NASA's Opportunity rover arrived at the western rim of Santa Maria Crater, some 90 meters wide, on Dec. 16, 2010, at a spot called “Palos”. Opportunity then drove in a counterclockwise direction to a spot called “Wanahani” at the southern edge. Researchers used data collected by CRISM to direct Opportunity's route to Endeavour crater. Spectral observations recorded by CRISM indicated the presence of water-bearing sulphate minerals at the location shown by the red dot on the southeast rim crater. This image was taken by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera also on MRO. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona.
CRISM has left its mark on multiple missions to Mars. This is an image of Mars’ Santa Maria Crater from Orbit. NASA’s Opportunity rover arrived at the western rim of Santa Maria Crater, some 90 meters wide, on Dec. 16, 2010, at a spot called “Palos”. Opportunity then drove in a counterclockwise direction to a spot called “Wanahani” at the southern edge. Researchers used data collected by CRISM to direct Opportunity’s route to Endeavour crater. Spectral observations recorded by CRISM indicated the presence of water-bearing sulphate minerals at the location shown by the red dot on the southeast rim crater. This image was taken by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera also on MRO. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona.

The CRISM investigation is one of the crown jewels of NASA, according to Richard Zurek, the mission's project scientist. New insights into the history of Mars will be provided by the analysis of these final maps.

If you want to learn more about the minerals on Mars, you can visit the MICA site. It was published in 2019.

More:

CRISMMarsMars’ surfaceCompact Reconnaissance Imaging
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