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Extraterrestrial Moessbauer Spectroscopy: More than Three Years of Mars Exploration and Developments for Future MissionsThe NASA Mars Exploration Rovers (MER), Spirit and Opportunity, landed on the Red Planet in January 2004. Both rovers are equipped with a miniaturized Moessbauer spectrometer MIMOS II. Designed for a three months mission, both rovers and both Moessbauer instruments are still working after more than three years of exploring the Martian surface. At the beginning of the mission, with a landed intensity of the Moessbauer source of 150 mCi, a 30 minute touch and go measurement produced scientifically valuable data while a good quality Moessbauer spectrum was obtained after approximately eight hours. Now, after about five halflives of the sources have passed, Moessbauer integrations are routinely planned to last approx.48 hours. Because of this and other age-related hardware degradations of the two rover systems, measurements now occur less frequently, but are still of outstanding quality and scientific importance. Summarizing important Moessbauer results, Spirit has traversed the plains from her landing site in Gusev crater and is now, for the greater part of the mission, investigating the stratigraphically older Columbia Hills. Olivine in rocks and soils in the plains suggests that physical rather than chemical processes are currently active.
Document ID
20070018025
Acquisition Source
Armstrong Flight Research Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Schroeder, Christian
(Mainz Univ. Germany)
Klingelhoefer, Goestar
(Mainz Univ. Germany)
Morris, Richard V.
(NASA Johnson Space Center Houston, TX, United States)
Rodionov, Daniel S.
(Mainz Univ. Germany)
Fleischer, Iris
(Mainz Univ. Germany)
Blumers, Mathias
(Mainz Univ. Germany)
Date Acquired
August 23, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2007
Subject Category
Lunar And Planetary Science And Exploration
Meeting Information
Meeting: International Conference on the Application of the Mossbauer Effect
Location: Kanpur
Country: India
Start Date: October 14, 2007
End Date: October 19, 2007
Sponsors: Indian Inst. of Tech.
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.
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