Planetary instrumentation has enabled scientists and citizen-scientists to learn more about the universe and beyond. Scientific payloads have been deployed over decades of exploration to answer questions of how the universe works, how our solar system evolved, what characteristics lead to life, and whether we are alone. Significant technology advances and the early identification of instrument requirements, such as environmental and sampling constraints, have facilitated a long history of successful missions. Simultaneously, engineering advances have enabled the development of complex mission concepts that aim to land on and explore challenging uncharted bodies. Therefore, it is critical to identify risks and dependencies across instrument technology trades and develop baseline system requirements in the mission design phase. This chapter discusses general instrument specifications and considerations, including size, mass, robustness, and cleanliness. In addition, the flight history, basic principles, and future developments of selected instrument classes are examined. The technologies reviewed in this chapter span remote and in-situ instruments including synthetic aperture radar, spectrometers, seismic instrumentation, and nano- and microtechnologies. The goal of the chapter is to provide an overview of the highlighted instrument classes, as well as general considerations, so that the reader may understand the operations, observations, and requirements of specific technologies.


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    Title :

    Instrumentation for Planetary Exploration



    Published in:

    Handbook of Space Resources ; Chapter : 6 ; 277-306


    Publication date :

    2023-04-28


    Size :

    30 pages




    Type of media :

    Article/Chapter (Book)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




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