High power lasers and _dust_ are incompatible... how it could work in a oil well borehole with rock vapor and mud is something I would have to see to believe...

But I did find it interesting that various pulse lengths and rep rates were ideal for differing rocks...

What I did find cool was the idea posted there in a different article of using a laser for long distance spectrometry... fire off a short high peak energy pulse at an object, turning a few cubic microns into plasma- analyze the emission of the plasma and voila...you know its composition....the researchers claim to have made it work at a distance of 10's of meters... I can think of a LOT of space uses for something like that....