The MER Mössbauer spectrometers: 40 months of operation on the Martian surface

Details The MER Mössbauer spectrometers: 40 months of operation on the Martian surface The MER Mössbauer spectrometers: 40 months of operation on the Martian surface

Aug 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007epsc.conf..553f&link_type=abstract

European Planetary Science Congress 2007, Proceedings of a conference held 20-24 August, 2007 in Potsdam, Germany. Online at ht

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Introduction: The two Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, each carry a miniaturised Mössbauer (MB) spectrometer (MIMOS II) as a part of their scientific payload. The MER mission, which was originally planned for three months, has been lasting for more than three years (almost 1200 Martian days, or "sols", as of May 15, 2007). The mission success criteria for the rovers had been to drive more than 600 meters, and the goal for the MB spectrometers had been to collect spectra from at least three different soil and rock samples. To date, the rovers have covered distances of more than 7 km (Spirit) and more than 10 km (Opportunity), respectively. The total amount of scientific targets investigated by the MB spectrometers approaches 300, the total number of integrations exceeds 500. Both MB spectrometers remain operational and continue to return valuable scientific data, even after more than five half-lives of the Co-57 MB sources (intensity at the time of landing ~150 mCi). Current integration times are about 48 hours in order to achieve reasonable statistics as opposed to 8 hours at the start of the mission.

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