Raman spectroscopy provides information about molecular vibrations that can be used for sample identification and quantization. The proposed Raman spectrometer is useful for both qualitative and quantitative applications. The proposed fiber Raman spectrometers have wide applications to include environmental monitoring, homeland security, life science, matter physics and chemistry. It offers a non-destructive, non-contact method of analysis suitable for both laboratories based and plant based applications. Currently, Raman spectrometer serves as an important instrument for Homeland Defense. It has been used for the bulk identification of explosives, chemical warfare agents, and other hazardous chemicals. The proposed fiber Raman spectrometer will provide NASA a light weight, low-power consumption, versatile, compact, rugged sensing instrument for rapid in-situ field detection of geological materials. It is a new field detection instrument capable of analyzing solid, liquid, and gaseous samples without firmware changes. The instrument proposed here is relevant to the NASA solicitation topic, "Instrument technologies for detecting inorganic and organic biomarkers on future Mars missions." It will directly support the research at NASA ARC (Dr. C. Mckay and Dr. B. Chen) for improving existing NASA flight instrument.
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