Plasma Experiment for Planetary Exploration (PEPE)

The Plasma Experiment for Planetary Exploration (PEPE) flown on Deep Space 1 combines an ion mass spectrometer and an electron spectrometer in a single, low-resource instrument. Among its novel features PEPE incorporates an electrostatically swept field-of-view and a linear electric field time-of-flight mass spectrometer. A significant amount of effort went into developing six novel technologies that helped reduce instrument mass to 5.5 kg and average power to 9.6 W. PEPE’s performance was demonstrated successfully by extensive measurements made in the solar wind and during the DS1 encounter with Comet 19P/Borrelly in September 2001. P. Barker is deceased.     

The Mars Odyssey Gamma-Ray Spectrometer Instrument Suite

The Mars Odyssey Gamma-Ray Spectrometer is a suite of three different instruments, a gamma subsystem (GS), a neutron spectrometer, and a high-energy neutron detector, working together to collect data that will permit the mapping of elemental concentrations on the surface of Mars. The instruments are complimentary in that the neutron instruments have greater sensitivity to low amounts of hydrogen, but their signals saturate as the hydrogen content gets high. The hydrogen signal in the GS, on the other hand, does not saturate at high hydrogen contents and is sensitive to small differences in hydrogen content even when hydrogen is very abundant. The hydrogen signal in the neutron instruments and the GS have a different dependence on depth, and thus by combining both data sets we can infer not only the amount of hydrogen, but constrain its distribution with depth. In addition to hydrogen, the GS determines the abundances of several other elements. The instruments, the basis of the technique, and the data processing requirements are described as are some expected applications of the data to scientific problems.     

The Genesis Solar Wind Concentrator

The primary goal of the Genesis Mission is to collect solar wind ions and, from their analysis, establish key isotopic ratios that will help constrain models of solar nebula formation and evolution. The ratios of primary interest include ¹⁷O/¹⁶O and ¹⁸O/¹⁶O to ±0.1%, ¹⁵N/¹⁴N to ±1%, and the Li, Be, and B elemental and isotopic abundances. The required accuracies in N and O ratios cannot be achieved without concentrating the solar wind and implanting it into low-background target materials that are returned to Earth for analysis. The Genesis Concentrator is designed to concentrate the heavy ion flux from the solar wind by an average factor of at least 20 and implant it into a target of ultra-pure, well-characterized materials. High-transparency grids held at high voltages are used near the aperture to reject >90% of the protons, avoiding damage to the target. Another set of grids and applied voltages are used to accelerate and focus the remaining ions to implant into the target. The design uses an energy-independent parabolic ion mirror to focus ions onto a 6.2 cm diameter target of materials selected to contain levels of O and other elements of interest established and documented to be below 10% of the levels expected from the concentrated solar wind. To optimize the concentration of the ions, voltages are constantly adjusted based on real-time solar wind speed and temperature measurements from the Genesis ion monitor. Construction of the Concentrator required new developments in ion optics; materials; and instrument testing and handling. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Medium energy neutral atom (MENA) imager for the IMAGE mission

The Medium Energy Neutral Atom (MENA) imager was developed in response to the Imaging from the Magnetopause to the Aurora for Global Exploration (IMAGE) requirement to produce images of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) in the energy range from 1 to 30 keV. These images will be used to infer characteristics of magnetospheric ion distributions. The MENA imager is a slit camera that images incident ENAs in the polar angle (based on a conventional spherical coordinate system defined by the spacecraft spin axis) and utilizes the spacecraft spin to image in azimuth. The speed of incident ENAs is determined by measuring the time-of-flight (TOF) from the entrance aperture to the detector. A carbon foil in the entrance aperture yields secondary electrons, which are imaged using a position-sensitive Start detector segment. This provides both the one-dimensional (1D) position at which the ENA passed through the aperture and a Start time for the TOF system. Impact of the incident ENA on the 1D position-sensitive Stop detector segment provides both a Stop-timing signal and the location that the ENA impacts the detector. The ENA incident polar angle is derived from the measured Stop and Start positions. Species identification (H vs. O) is based on variation in secondary electron yield with mass for a fixed ENA speed. The MENA imager is designed to produce images with 8°×4° angular resolution over a field of view 140°×360°, over an energy range from 1 keV to 30 keV. Thus, the MENA imager is well suited to conduct measurements relevant to the Earth's ring current, plasma sheet, and (at times) magnetosheath and cusp.