EGU21-11505
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-11505
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

ADRON instrument for future missions to Moon and Mars: active neutron and gamma-ray spectroscopy

Maxim Mokrousov, Dmitriy Golovin, Igor Mitrofanov, Alexander Kozyrev, Maxim Litvak, Alexey Malakhov, Anton Sanin, Vladislav Tretyakov, and Artem Anikin
Maxim Mokrousov et al.
  • Space Research Intitute, Moscow, Russian Federation (mokromax@iki.rssi.ru)

The series of ADRON instruments are developed in Russian Space Research Institute (IKI) for Russian Luna-25, Luna-27 and Roscosmos-ESA ExoMars-2022 landers. The main goal of this experiment is studying of elemental composition of planetary sub-surface down to 1 m. Using pulsing neutron generator and observing albedo after-pulse neutron and gamma-ray emission from the soil, one can detect layering stratification of hydrogen and mass fractions of other elements.

Both instruments consist of two blocks: pulsing neutron generator (PNG) with 14 MeV neutron pulse duration around 1 microsecond, and detector block with neutrons and gamma-ray detectors based on 3He counters and CeBr3 (LaBr3) scintillator, respectively. 3He counters allow to detect thermal and epithermal neutrons, which are the most sensitive to hydrogen in underlying soil, and gamma-ray detector allows to detect nuclear lines at the energy range from 200 keV up to 10 MeV. Readout and digital electronics is designed to minimize the dead-time of signal processing. It allows to accumulate the after-pulse profiles of emission of neutrons and gamma-rays with very good time (from 2 microsecond) and spectral resolutions (about 4 % for 662 keV).

The results of laboratory measurements and numerical simulations for ADRON units will be presented for post-pulse emission of neutrons and gamma rays from the planetary soil with different water content, elementary composition and layering structure.

 

How to cite: Mokrousov, M., Golovin, D., Mitrofanov, I., Kozyrev, A., Litvak, M., Malakhov, A., Sanin, A., Tretyakov, V., and Anikin, A.: ADRON instrument for future missions to Moon and Mars: active neutron and gamma-ray spectroscopy, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-11505, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-11505, 2021.