THE NEUTRAL ATOMS DETECTOR TECHNOLOGIES DEVELOPED FOR THE SERENA PACKAGE IN VIEW OF ESA BEPICOLOMBO PLANETARY ORBITER

摘要

A comprehensive suite for the particle detection in the Mercury environment,the SERENA instrument,is going to be proposed for the ESA cornerstone BepiColombo mission.The SERENA package consists of the sensors STROFIO and ELENA,which identify the neutral particles and measure their energies in the range from fractions of eV to a few keVs,and the sensors PICAM and MIPA for measuring and analyzing ionized particles from some eV to tens of keV. The proposed neutral sensor STROFIO will observe and analyze the bulk of the thermal/supra-thermal(0-50 eV) exospheric gas along the ram direction,while ELENA will be devoted to detect the sputtering emission(E min< 100eV;E max>1 keV)within 1-D(2 deg x 60 deg)nadir cross track slices from the planet surface.The paper describes the new design techniques approached for the neutral particles identification and the related miniaturized data- handling unit.Such design technologies could be fruitfully exported to different applications for planetary exploration.