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The MarSCoDe Instrument Suite on the Mars Rover of China’s Tianwen-1 Mission

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Abstract

Mars Surface Composition Detector (MarSCoDe) is a scientific payload onboard the Mars rover of China’s Tianwen-1 mission. With the capability of 1.6∼7 m remote detection and analysis, MarSCoDe instrument suite consists of a two dimensional pointing mirror and an optical head outside the rover cabin, a Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) spectrometer and a Short Wave Infrared (SWIR) spectrometer collectively covering 240∼2400 nm and a master controller unit inside the rover body, calibration target sets, optical fibers and power cables connecting the internal and external units. Combining the techniques of active LIBS, passive SWIR and micro-imaging, MarSCoDe provides functions including elemental composition discrimination and quantitative determination, classification of rock and soil characteristics, sample texture imaging and characterization of plasma-excited area. This paper introduces MarSCoDe mainly in terms of scientific objectives, design requirements, assembly and implementation, spectral and radiation calibration, and performance verification. The LIBS laser irradiance on the target can soundly exceed 10 MW/mm2, and the performance of the LIBS module operated at different temperatures has been tested. The field of view of the SWIR spectrometer is 36.5 mrad. The micro-imager can extract the central pixel area of 320 × 320 and 1024 × 1024, and the former is binned into 64 × 64. The 2D pointing mirror has a wide forward detection range and a narrow backward calibration range, with the pointing pitch accuracy better than 0.133°.

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Abbreviations

2D:

Two Dimensional

Al-SiC:

Aluminum Based Silicon Carbide

ASD:

Analytical Spectral Devices

BS:

Beam Splitter

CAS:

Chinese Academy of Sciences

CCD:

Charge Coupled Devices

CTE:

Coefficient of Thermal Expansion

dB:

Decibels

DN:

Digital Number

EM:

Engineer Model

EMI:

Electromagnetic Interference

EQM:

Engineer Qualification Model

FM:

Flight Model

FOV:

Field of View

FPGA:

Field Programmable Gate Array

FWHM:

Full Width at Half Maximum

InGaAs:

Indium Gallium Arsenide

LD:

Laser Diode

LIBS:

Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy

LOD:

Limit of Detection

MarSCoDe:

Mars Surface Composition Detector

MTF:

Modulation Transfer Function

MW:

Million Watts

NA:

Numerical Aperture

PI:

Principal Investigator

PIN:

Positive-Intrinsic-Negative

PLS:

Partial Least Squares

RF:

Radio Frequency

RMSE:

Root Mean Square Error

SITP:

Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics

SNR:

Signal-to-Noise Ratio

SWIR:

Short Wave Infrared

TEC:

Thermal-Electric Cooler

UCAS:

University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

VCSEL:

Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by China’s first Mars exploration program led by Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center of China National Space Administration (CNSA), and was also funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant No. 11904378) and Shanghai Postdoctoral Excellence Program (Grant No. 2018085). The MarSCoDe team wishes to thank the additional people who support the MarSCoDe program at various institutes or academies, including China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), and other institutes of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), i.e. National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC), National Space Science Center (NSSC), Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (SIOM), Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics, Shanghai Research Institute of Materials, and No. 26 Institute of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), etc. Assistance at SITP by Jinwen Lu, Lin Wu, Xuemin Liu, Jianjun Jia, Zhiping He, Ziqing Jiang, Weixin Cui, Ruxin Xu, Baolong Zhang, Xiaopeng Liu, Minsheng Cheng, Yuquan Zhang, Xue Li, Xiangyang Li, Qinfei Xu, Haimei Gong, Xiaoke Wu, Jun Wu, Jinping Zhang, Libin Ye, Yigang Xu, et al. is greatly appreciated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Space Active Opto-Electronics Technology, CAS, Shanghai, China

    Weiming Xu, Xiangfeng Liu, Zhixin Yan, Luning Li, Zhenqiang Zhang, Yaowu Kuang, Hao Jiang, Hongxuan Yu, Fan Yang, Chongfei Liu, Tingting Wang, Changkun Li, Rui Xu, Xiong Wan, Binyong Wang & Rong Shu

  2. Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, CAS, Shanghai, China

    Weiming Xu, Xiangfeng Liu, Zhixin Yan, Luning Li, Zhenqiang Zhang, Yaowu Kuang, Hao Jiang, Hongxuan Yu, Fan Yang, Chongfei Liu, Tingting Wang, Changkun Li, Yanfei Jin, Jiayi Shen, Botao Wang, Wenzhi Wan, Jun Chen, Shenghao Ni, Yunpeng Ruan, Rui Xu, Changxing Zhang, Ziyong Yuan, Xiong Wan, Yichao Yang, Zhaohui Li, Yuanting Shen, Dingzhen Liu, Binyong Wang, Rujun Yuan, Tao Bao & Rong Shu

  3. State Key Laboratory of Infrared Physics, Shanghai, China

    Rong Shu

  4. Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, UCAS, Hangzhou, China

    Weiming Xu & Rong Shu

Authors
  1. Weiming Xu
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  2. Xiangfeng Liu
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  9. Fan Yang
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  18. Shenghao Ni
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  20. Rui Xu
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  21. Changxing Zhang
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  22. Ziyong Yuan
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  26. Yuanting Shen
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  29. Rujun Yuan
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  30. Tao Bao
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  31. Rong Shu
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, engineering development, data collection and analysis were performed by Weiming Xu, Xiangfeng Liu, Zhixin Yan, Luning Li, Zhenqiang Zhang, Yaowu Kuang, Hao Jiang, Hongxuan Yu, Fan Yang, Chongfei Liu, Tingting Wang, Changkun Li, Yanfei Jin, Jiayi Shen, Botao Wang, Wenzhi Wan, Jun Chen, Shenghao Ni, Yunpeng Ruan, Rui Xu, Changxing Zhang, Ziyong Yuan, Xiong Wan, Yichao Yang, Zhaohui Li, Rujun Yuan and Tao Bao. Process control and quality management were performed by Yuanting Shen, Dingzhen Liu and Binyong Wang. The manuscript was written and edited by Weiming Xu, Xiangfeng Liu, Luning Li and Rong Shu. This work was overall supervised by Weiming Xu and Rong Shu, and Rong Shu is the PI of this project. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rong Shu.

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The Huoxing-1 (HX-1) / Tianwen-1 (TW-1) mission to Mars

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Xu, W., Liu, X., Yan, Z. et al. The MarSCoDe Instrument Suite on the Mars Rover of China’s Tianwen-1 Mission. Space Sci Rev 217, 64 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-021-00836-5

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