Alluxa, Inc. developed specialty optical filters used aboard the Perseverance Rover, which landed safely on Mars on February 18, 2021. Alluxa’s special notch filter is optimized for high performance over a wide angle range in order to provide in-band light to the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) imager.
Alluxa’s filters help enable non-contact detection and characterization of organics and minerals on Mar’s surface. Developed in conjunction with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, CA, the SHERLOC instrument, part of the Perseverance payload, is a Deep UV (DUV) resonance Raman and fluorescence spectrometer that will scan for past life on Mars and help identify rock samples for possible return to Earth.