The MErcury Radiometer and Thermal Infrared Spectrometer (MERTIS) is an instrument to study the mineralogy and temperature distribution of Mercury's surface in unprecedented detail. During the nominal mission, MERTIS will map the whole surface at 500 m scale, combining a push-broom IR grating spectrometer (TIS) with a radiometer (TIR) sharing the same optics, instrument electronics, and in- ight calibration components for the wavelength range of 7-14 μm (TIS) and 7-40 μm (TIR). MERTIS observed the Moon in April 2020 and Venus in October 2020 under conditions different from nominal operation and performed surprisingly well. MERTIS returned several hundreds of thousands scientifically useful spectra from the two campaigns. MERTIS archival data are stored in Planetary Data System v4 format (PDS4), that describes 2 physical formats for each MERTIS channel. Each channel will is stored in Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) and in pure ASCII, to maximize both machine and human readability.
The MErcury Radiometer and Thermal Infrared Spectrometer (MERTIS) is an instrument to study the mineralogy and temperature distribution of Mercury’s surface in unprecedented detail. MERTIS was proposed in 2003 as payload of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter spacecraft of ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission and will reach Mercury in 2025. MERTIS will map the whole surface at 500 m scale, combining a push-broom IR grating spectrometer (TIS) with a radiometer (TIR) sharing the same optics, instrument electronics and in-flight calibration components for the whole wavelength range of 7- 14μm (TIS) and 7-40μm (TIR). MERTIS successfully completed its planned tests of the Near-Earth Commissioning Phase (NECP) between 13 and 14 November, collecting thousands of measurements of its internal calibration bodies and deep space. The data collected during NECP, are being used to verify the operational performances of onboard sub-modules, in particular the spectrometer and radiometer sensor sensitivity. A preliminary look at calibrated data shows a performance comparable with ground-based measurements and no appreciable performance loss or misalignment. The next important dates for MERTIS are the Earth/Moon flyby on 6 April 2020 and the first Venus flyby on 12 October 2020. Both those encounters will be important both for further instrument calibration refinement and for possible unprecedented measurement in the thermal infrared of the Moon and Venus.
KEYWORDS: Space operations, Spectroscopy, Mercury (planet), Calibration, Infrared spectroscopy, Data processing, Radiometry, Seaborgium, Data archive systems, Control systems
The MErcury Radiometer and Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (MERTIS) is an instrument to study mineralogy and temperature distribution of Mercury surface in unprecedented quality. MERTIS was proposed in 2003 as payload of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter spacecraft of ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission and will reach Mercury in 2026. MERTIS will map the whole surface at 500m resolution combining a push-broom IR grating spectrometer (TIS) with a radiometer (TIR) sharing the same optics, instrument electronics and in-flight calibration components for the whole wavelength range of 7-14μm (TIS) and 7-40μm (TIR). Currently we are developing and testing an ingestion, calibration and transformation pipeline for MERTIS data, from raw telemetry level data to calibrated product and high level derived product. Bepicolombo Science Ground Segment (BC-SGS or SGS) is embracing new technologies for the BepiColombo mission and follows the latest NASA/PDS format, the xml based PDS4. We adopt open source languages and well optimized libraries for the underlying processing. The data processing pipeline is fully containerized via Docker to be independent from transition between server/OSs/environment, drastically reducing the integration and testing time. Due to strict infrastructural constrains like spacecraft downlink bandwidth and onboard mass memory, the already complex observation scenario is subject to further optimizations. This complicates the reconstruction process for higher-level products like global maps of emissivity and thermal inertia.
KEYWORDS: Stars, Field programmable gate arrays, Data processing, Planets, Cameras, Data communications, Control systems, Electronics, Aerospace engineering
PLATO1 is an M-class mission of the European Space Agency’s Cosmic Vision program, whose launch is foreseen by 2026. PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars aims to characterize exoplanets and exoplanetary systems by detecting planetary transits and conducting asteroseismology of their parent stars. PLATO is the next generation planetary transit space experiment, as it will fly after CoRoT, Kepler, TESS and CHEOPS; its objective is to characterize exoplanets and their host stars in the solar neighbors. While it is built on the heritage from previous missions, the major breakthrough to be achieved by PLATO will come from its strong focus on bright targets, typically with mv≤11. The PLATO targets will also include a large number of very bright and nearby stars, with mv≤8. The prime science goals characterizing and distinguishing PLATO from the previous missions are: the detection and characterization of exoplanetary systems of all kinds, including both the planets and their host stars, reaching down to small, terrestrial planets in the habitable zone; the identification of suitable targets for future, more detailed characterization, including a spectroscopic search for biomarkers in nearby habitable exoplanets (e.g. ARIEL Mission scientific case, E-ELT observations from Ground); a full characterization of the planet host stars, via asteroseismic analysis: this will provide the Community with the masses, radii and ages of the host stars, from which masses, radii and ages of the detected planets will be determined.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.