Detection and identification of salts and frozen salt solutions combining laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy and multivariate analysis methods: A study for future martian exploration

► Severalsalts and frozensalt solutions wereinvestigatedwith LIBS. ► Focus was on discriminating sulfates and chlorideswith the same cation. ► Differentmultivariateanalysismethodswereapplied to the data. ► Sulfates and chloridescanbesuccessfullydistinguished in frozen solutions. ► Partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) worked best for discrimination.