From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Mini-TES
Mini-TES
choose landing sites for the Spirit and Opportunity Mars
explorer rovers.
The Mini-TES is used for identifying promising rocks
and soils for closer examination, and to determine the
processes that formed Martian rocks. It measures the in-
frared radiation that the target rock or object emits in
167 different wavelengths, providing information about
the target’s composition. One particular goal is to search
for minerals that were formed by the action of water,
such as carbonates and clays. The instrument can also
look skyward to provide temperature profiles of the
Martian atmosphere and detect the abundance of dust
and water vapor. The actual instrument is located inside
the warm electronics box in the body of the rover - the
mirror redirects radiation into the aperture from above.
The Mini-TES instruments aboard the MERs Opportunity
and Spirit were never expected to survive the cold Mart-
ian winter even if the rovers themselves survived. It was
thought that a small potassium bromide (KBr) beamsplit-
ter which was housed in an aluminium fitting would
An image of a Mini-TES[1] crack due to the mismatched coefficient of thermal ex-
pansion. This never happened however and the miniTES
instrument on both rovers has survived several Martian
winters, and the Spirit rover continues to periodically
use the Mini-TES for remote sensing. (The miniTES on
the Opportunity rover is not currently being used be-
cause of accumulated dust on the mirror following the
2007 dust storm[2]).
There are two other types of spectrometers mounted
on the rover’s arm which provide additional information
about the composition when the rover is close enough to
touch the object.
An image from Mini-TES on board the Mars Exploration The Mini-TES weighs 2.1 kg (4.6 lb)[1] of the total
Rovers. 185 kg (408 lb) for the whole rover.
The Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-
TES) is an infrared spectrometer used for detecting the
See also
composition of a material (typically rocks) from a dis- • Mars Exploration Rover
tance. By making its measurements in the thermal in- • Thermal infrared spectroscopy
frared part of the electromagnetic spectrum, it has the
ability to penetrate through the dust coatings common External links
to the Martian surface which is usually problematic for
remote sensing observations. There is one on each of the • NASA JPL web-page stating purpose of Mini-TES
two Mars Exploration Rovers.[1] • Technical academic publication on Mini-TES for
The Mini-TES was originally developed by Raytheon Mars Exploration Rover
for the Department of Geological Sciences at Arizona • Web-page regarding information recorded by Mini-
State University. The Mini-TES is a miniaturized version TES
of Raytheon’s Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) TES, built by • Slide show of Mini-TES operational details
Arizona State University and Raytheon SAS’ Santa Bar-
bara Remote Sensing. The MGS TES data helped scientists
1
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Mini-TES
References Astronautica 59 (8-11): 990–999. doi:10.1016/
j.actaastro.2005.07.055.
[1] ^ Silverman et al.; Peralta, R; Christensen, P; [2] http://www.planetary.org/news/2007/
Mehall, G (2005). "Miniature thermal emission 1031_Mars_Exploration_Rovers_Update_Spirit.html
spectrometer for the Mars Exploration Rover". Acta
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mini-TES&oldid=410369373"
Categories:
• Mars Exploration Rover
• Spectrometers
• Spacecraft instruments
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