Collection of files utilized and recorded as part of the pre-flight calibration of PIXL for X-ray fluorescence elemental quantification

This dataset includes all the files utilized or produced as part of the pre-flight elemental calibration performed on the X-ray system of NASA’s Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) (Allwood et al., 2020). PIXL is a focused-beam X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (XRS) installed on the arm of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. NASA has long relied upon XRS’s to deliver quantified chemical compositional information of typical inorganic rock-forming elements (atomic number: Z ≥ 11). New to this generation of spectrometer, PIXL is capable of raster scanning its focused beam to produce high-spatial resolution elemental map images of rock textures. To ensure that PIXL would be capable of quantifying elemental concentrations, a calibration procedure was conducted pre-flight (Heirwegh et al., 2024) on the flight hardware. Spectrum files acquired from PIXL measurements performed on 30 calibration target materials were utilized in this procedure along with the open sourced PIXL Quantitative XRF software (PIQUANT) (Heirwegh et al., 2022, Elam et al., 2022). Details of this calibration are recorded elsewhere (Heirwegh et al., 2024). A ReadMe file that accompanies this dataset describes the basic structure of the file set and gives and abridged version of the flight calibration procedure and how the files in this dataset were involved in the calibration. The dataset includes raw recorded and summed spectrum files, and all files used as input to, and generated as output by, the PIQUANT software. The sharing of this dataset on the JPL Open Repository serves the purpose of providing a primary means to a make these data permanently available to the public. A. C. Allwood, L. A. Wade, M. C. Foote, et al., PIXL: Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry Space Sci. Rev. 216 (2020) 134. doi:10.1007/s11214-020-00767-7 C. M. Heirwegh, W. T. Elam, L. P. O’Neil, K. P. Sinclair, A. Das, The Focused Beam X-ray Fluorescence Elemental Quantification Software Package PIQUANT, Spectrochim. Acta B, 196 (2022) 106520. doi:10.1016/j.sab.2022.106520. W. T. Elam, C. M. Heirwegh, PIQUANT (Version 3.2.11) [Open source computer software] Zenodo. (2022) doi:10.5281/zenodo.6959225 C. M. Heirwegh, W. T. Elam, Y. Liu, C. Hummel, A. Das, A. C. Allwood, L. G. Armstrong, N. Bacop, K. P. Sinclair, L. P. O’Neil, L. A. Wade, M. C. Foote, M. E. Sondheim, R. W. Denise, P. R. Lawson, J. H. Kawamura, M. H. Au, A. Kitiyakara, R. A. Romero, J. A. Hurowitz, B. C. Clark III, G. R. Rossman, M. S. Anderson, Pre-Flight Calibration of PIXL for X-ray Fluorescence Elemental Quantification (2024) arXiv:2402.01544 [physics.app-ph].