A LENA Instrument onboard BepiColombo and Chandrayaan-1

Journal Article · Tue Jun 16 00:00:00 EDT 2009 · AIP Conference Proceedings

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3169273· OSTI ID:21316801

Kazama, Yoichi ^[1]; Barabash, Stas; Wieser, Martin ^[2]; Asamura, Kazushi ^[3]; Wurz, Peter ^[4]

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1. Institute of Aerospace Technology, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Tsukuba, Ibaraki (Japan)
2. Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna (Sweden)
3. Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Sagamihara, Kanagawa (Japan)
4. University of Bern, Bern (Switzerland)

Low-energy neutral atom (LENA) observations bring us important information on particle environments around planetary objects such as Mercury and the Moon. In this paper, we report on a new development of a LENA instrument of light weight ({approx}2 kg) for planetary explorations. The instrument is capable of energy and mass discrimination with a large sensitivity by utilizing surface ionization followed by an electrostatic analyzer and a time-of-flight velocity spectrometer. The performance of the instrument is investigated by numerical simulations. This enables us to obtain detailed performance characterization of LENA measurements by the instrument. We also made trajectory tracing of photons entering the instrument to examine photon rejection capability. The simulations show that the energy range is from {approx}10 eV to >3.3 keV and the angular resolutions are 10 degx25 deg for 25-eV LENAs, which are sufficient for planetary LENA observations. Laboratory tests of a prototype model of the instruments developed with this study are now ongoing. According to the initial tests, the measurement principle of the instrument has been verified. This LENA instrument has been selected for both the Indian Moon exploration mission Chandrayaan-1 and the European-Japanese Mercury exploration mission BepiColombo.

• OSTI ID: 21316801
• Journal Information: AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 1144, Issue 1; Conference: International conference on future perspectives of space plasma and particle instrumentation and international collaborations, Tokyo (Japan), 1-3 Nov 2006; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.3169273; (c) 2009 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
ATOMS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
ELECTROSTATIC ANALYZERS
EV RANGE
KEV RANGE
MERCURY PLANET
MOON
PERFORMANCE
PHOTONS
RESOLUTION
SENSITIVITY
SPACE
SURFACE IONIZATION
TIME-OF-FLIGHT METHOD