Determination of foreign broadening coefficients for Methane Lines Targeted by the Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) on the Mars Curiosity Rover

•Measurements of foreign broadening coefficients for Mars-TLS specific methane lines.•Spectral parameters were deduced from Speed-dependent Voigt profile with line mixing effects taken into account.•A thorough comparison of different line profile fits for the Mars-TLS methane lines. The fitted broadening coefficients and areas deviated up to 30% and 4%, respectively, when comparing the speed-dependent Voigt profile (with Rosenkrantz line-mixing) with the simplest Voigt profile.•Foreign broadening coefficients were measured within a precision of 2.2%.

Molecular line parameters of foreign- broadening by air, carbon dioxide, and helium gas have been experimentally determined for infrared ro-vibrational spectral lines of methane isotopologues (12CH4 and 13CH4) at 3057 cm−1 targeted by the Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) in the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover. From multi-spectrum analyses with the speed-dependent Voigt line profile with Rosenkrantz line-mixing, speed-dependence and line-mixing effects were quantified for methane spectra at total pressures up to 200 mbar. The fitted air-broadening coefficients deviated from 8-25% to those reported in the HITRAN-2012 database.