Planetary Surface Instrument Workshop Report (1995)

PLANETARY SURFACE INSTRUMENTS WORKSHOP Edited by Charles Meyer, Allan H. Treiman, and Theodor Kostiuk Held at Houston, Texas May 12–13, 1995 Sponsored by Lunar and Planetary Institute Lunar and Planetary Institute 3600 Bay Area Boulevard Houston TX 77058-1113 LPI Technical Report Number 95-05 LPI/TR--95-05 ii Planetary Surface Instruments Workshop Compiled in 1996 by LUNAR AND PLANETARY INSTITUTE The Institute is operated by the Universities Space Research Association under Contract No. NASW-4574 with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Material in this volume may be copied without restraint for library, abstract service, education, or personal research purposes; however, republication of any paper or portion thereof requires the written permission of the authors as well as the appropriate acknowledgment of this publication. This report may be cited as Meyer C., Treiman A. H., and Kostiuk T., eds. (1996) Planetary Surface Instruments Workshop. LPI Tech. Rpt. 95- 05, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston. 115 pp. This report is distributed by ORDER DEPARTMENT Lunar and Planetary Institute 3600 Bay Area Boulevard Houston TX 77058-1113 Mail order requestors will be invoiced for the cost of shipping and handling. Cover: MIMOS-II, a miniaturized Mössbauer instrument with two detector channels, developed for use in space missions with very limited power resources like the Small Stations of the Russian Mars ’96 Mission. LPI Technical Report 95-05 iii Introduction The next steps in the exploration of the solar system will include robotic missions to the surfaces of planets, moons, asteroids, and comets. For the greatest possible returns from these missions, their scientific rationales must be closely coordinated with development of appropriate instrumentation and with the constraints of mission and program planning. Instruments on a spacecraft must take measurements that can answer critical scientific questions within the mass, time, and energy constraints of its mission. Unfortu- nately, this ideal state of cooperation is difficult to achieve. Scientists, engineers, and managers often have distinctly different goals, speak different languages, and work on different timescales. The Planetary Surface Instruments Workshop, held at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, on May 12–13, 1995, was motivated by one problem of timescales: Today, a planetary surface mission could likely proceed from concept to final manifest faster than a critical instrument could be brought from concept to space-readiness. In order to address this potential problem, we hoped this workshop would initiate cooperation on scientific instruments for planetary (and cometary) surface missions before specific missions are proposed or started. Planning and operation of the Planetary Surface Instruments Workshop followed a few simple principles. The workshop focused on high-level scientific problems common to all solid planetary surfaces, and avoided (where possible) issues peculiar to specific solar system bodies. The workshop focused on analytical instrumentation that would be applicable to solid bodies of the inner solar system (including asteroids and passing comets). The workshop did not deal with specific missions in planning or development, including their scientific goals and instrument selections, except as examples of more general scientific, engineering, or management principles. We sought to invite younger and newer participants in planetary missions and spaceflight instrument development, but did not specifically exclude experienced participants. The workshop was run on a “no-frills” basis, had no registration fee, and finished under budget. And finally, we committed to completing this technical report for electronic distribution within three months of the workshop. The workshop brought together scientists and instrument design engineers from a wide range of fields to consider what scientific instruments could do from a landed robotic spacecraft. Of the 65 scientists and engineers who attended the workshop, 23 were from university institutions, 5 were from overseas, 5 represented commercial interests, and the rest were from govern- ment laboratories. A list of participants and their addresses is included at the end of this volume. The attendees were assigned, according to areas of expertise or general scientific discipline, into eight working groups: precise chemical analysis, isotopes and evolved gas analysis, planetary interiors, atmospheres from within, mineralogy, carbon-based compounds and exobiol- ogy, regoliths in 3D, and field geology/processes. Each group included iv Planetary Surface Instruments Workshop generalists and specialists, scientists and engineers, as well as “newcomers” and “old hands.” Many attendees had significant expertise in more than one area, and were encouraged to contribute to other groups. Many attendees had “vested interests” in specific instruments or scientific areas; we encouraged all to be evenhanded in evaluating their work and that of others. Each group was asked to (1) assess the general scientific questions an- swerable by robotic spacecraft landed on planetary surfaces, (2) identify the measurements critical to answering those questions, (3) suggest classes of instruments capable of those measurements, and (4) identify areas where the scientifically desired measurements are not feasible using available instruments. Each group was given free reign to address the tasks as they saw fit, thus their reports reflect the organizational and presentational needs of their subject and do not follow a standard format. The groups each made great efforts to relate instrumental measurements to important scientific problems, and organized themselves to write the chapters of this report. Most of the actual writing was done after the workshop. Although the workshop goal was to address “generic” rather than “specific” solar system objects, most of the workshop groups seem to have focused on instrumentation for Mars and comets as examples of landing targets, perhaps influenced by the authoritative COMPLEX report. Perhaps this was also due to the fact that several proposals were due for Mars Surveyor and ROSETTA/Champollion in the same timeframe as the workshop. In plenary sessions at the workshop we heard presentations of the “Criti- cal Science Questions” as laid out by COMPLEX (G. Ryder), each of the NASA Science Working Groups (J. Kerridge, A. Treiman, T. Swindle, S. Keddie, and M. Zolensky), and the European and Japanese communities (H. Mizutani and J. Zarnecki). We also heard reports on a JPL approach for packaging instruments into “Sciencecraft” (P. Beauchamp), on one Discovery mission proposal (H. Schmitt), and on the need for a long-term strategy for Mars (S. Saunders). These ideas have been considered and discussed in the enclosed chapters from each of the teams at the workshop. This exercise has led to a more focused community of scientists interested in exploring planetary surfaces using instrumental techniques. The workshop brought together scientists and instrument design engineers from a wide range of fields to consider what scientific instruments could do from a landed robotic spacecraft. One result is that members of this community are now better able to review proposals and advocate missions to planetary surfaces. The product of the Planetary Surface Instruments Workshop is this report, which contains the attendees’ responses to the tasks above. The report is intended to provide support and information to the scientific and engineering communities concerned with the planetary bodies and comets, spacecraft mission, and instrumentation design. It is also intended to provide support and information to NASA programs concerned with instrument development, and to the many NASA Science Working Groups regarding ways in which critical scientific questions can be answered by robotic probes to planetary LPI Technical Report 95-05 v surfaces. Many groups felt that an introductory “tutorial” was important in framing their group’s conclusions. Many of the groups also named specific instruments and packages as examples of the current state of instrumentation technology; this naming does not constitute endorsement by NASA or the LPI. This report should not be considered a final statement; by its preliminary informal nature, it cannot be complete nor completely inclusive. Nor is it intended to supplant the conclusions of NASA and NRC advisory boards or previous conference on instruments for planetary missions. If fact, we hope this report will soon be outdated by the emergence of new scientific questions, new measurement schemes, and new spaceflight instruments suitable for deployment on planetary surfaces. We are, of course, grateful to all the workshop participants, who gave their expertise, time, and travel funds toward completion of this report, and to those who could not attend but also contributed to this document. We are particularly grateful to the group leaders, who agreed to compile input from each group and render it a coherent whole. We appreciate financial sponsor- ship from the LPI. The workshop itself would not have been possible without support from the Publications and Program Services Department of the LPI. Equally, electronic publication of this report would not have been possible without support from the LPI’s Center for Computing and Planetary Data Analysis. —Allan H. Treiman, Charles Meyer, and Theodor Kostiuk vi Planetary Surface Instruments Workshop LPI Technical

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