Science operation plan of Phobos and Deimos from the MMX spacecraft

The science operations of the spacecraft and remote sensing instruments for the Martian Moon eXploration (MMX) mission are discussed by the mission operation working team. In this paper, we describe the Phobos observations during the first 1.5 years of the spacecraft’s stay around Mars, and the Deimos observations before leaving the Martian system. In the Phobos observation, the spacecraft will be placed in low-altitude quasi-satellite orbits on the equatorial plane of Phobos and will make high-resolution topographic and spectroscopic observations of the Phobos surface from five different altitudes orbits. The spacecraft will also attempt to observe polar regions of Phobos from a three-dimensional quasi-satellite orbit moving out of the equatorial plane of Phobos. From these observations, we will constrain the origin of Phobos and Deimos and select places for landing site candidates for sample collection. For the Deimos observations, the spacecraft will be injected into two resonant orbits and will perform many flybys to observe the surface of Deimos over as large an area as possible. Graphical Abstract

TESS Data for Asteroseismology: Light-curve Systematics Correction

Data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have produced of the order of one million light curves at cadences of 120 s and especially 1800 s for every ∼27 day observing sector during its two-year nominal mission. These data constitute a treasure trove for the study of stellar variability and exoplanets. However, to fully utilize the data in such studies a proper removal of systematic-noise sources must be performed before any analysis. The TESS Data for Asteroseismology group is tasked with providing analysis-ready data for the TESS Asteroseismic Science Consortium, which covers the full spectrum of stellar variability types, including stellar oscillations and pulsations, spanning a wide range of variability timescales and amplitudes. We present here the two current implementations for co-trending of raw photometric light curves from TESS, which cover different regimes of variability to serve the entire seismic community. We find performance in terms of commonly used noise statistics meets expectations and is applicable to a wide range of intrinsic variability types. Further, we find that the correction of light curves from a full sector of data can be completed well within a few days, meaning that when running in steady state our routines are able to process one sector before data from the next arrives. Our pipeline is open-source and all processed data will be made available on the websites of the TESS Asteroseismic Science Operations Center and the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes.

Contamination Control for Ultra-Sensitive Life-Detection Missions

A key science priority for planetary exploration is to search for signs of life in our Solar System. Life-detection mission concepts aim to assess whether or not biomolecular signatures of life are present, which requires highly sensitive instrumentation. This introduces greater risk of false positives, and perhaps false negatives. Stringent science-derived contamination requirements for achieving science measurements on life-detection missions necessitate mitigation approaches that minimize, protect from, and prevent science-relevant contamination of critical surfaces of the science payload and provide high confidence to life-detection determinations. To this end, we report on technology advances that focus on understanding contamination transfer from pre-launch processing to end of mission using high-fidelity physics in the form of computational fluid dynamics and sorption physics for monolayer adsorption/desorption, and on developing a new full-spacecraft bio-molecular barrier design that restricts contamination of the spacecraft and instruments by the launch vehicle hardware. The bio-molecular barrier isolates the spacecraft from biological, molecular, and particulate contamination from the external environment. Models were used to evaluate contamination transport for a designs reference mission that utilizes the barrier. Results of the modeling verify the efficacy of the barrier and an in-cruise decontamination activity. Overall mission contamination tracking from launch to science operations demonstrated exceptionally low probability on contamination impacting science measurements, meeting the stringent contamination requirements of femtomolar levels of compounds. These advances will enable planetary missions that aim to detect and identify signatures of life in our Solar System.

the TASTE mission: In situ DEIMOS terrain analyzer with smalls and miniturized lander

<p>Deimos and Phobos are considered primary targets of investigation to understand the origin and evolution of Mars and more in general the terrestrial planets of the Solar System. </p> <p>TASTE mission aims complementing MMX investigation by focusing on Deimos surface, combining both <strong>global remote sensing</strong> observations from a close orbit and<strong> direct in-situ analyses</strong> of the surface thanks to a lander release on Deimos. With a synergy between orbital and in-situ investigations, the proposed mission will contribute to the Deimos global morphology understanding; its global elemental abundance; landing site morphology and texture; landing site organic content and surface composition. TASTE is conceived as a Cubesat-in-Cubesat mission: a 12U space asset composed by a <strong>9U orbiter </strong>and a<strong> 3U lander</strong>. The former embarks an <strong>X-gamma ray spectrometer</strong> developed by OAT and a multispectral camera, the second is equipped with a  <strong>miniaturized Surface Sample Analyser</strong> (SSA), composed by a new Sample Acquisition Mechanism (SAM), conceived by PoliMi and a Surface Analytical Laboratory (SAL)  developed by INAF OAA. <br />The mission is conceived to keep the orbiter on a QSO nearby Deimos to facilitate the lander release and the scientific operations in synergy with the lander itself. Details on science, space assets sizing and design and mission science operations will be discussed in deep. </p>

Water vapor vertical distributions on Mars: Results from three years of TGO/NOMAD science operations

<div> <p>Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery (NOMAD) onboard ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) started  science measurements on 21 April, 2018. Here, we present results on the retrievals of water vapor vertical distributions in the Martian atmosphere from three years of TGO/NOMAD science operations.</p> </div> <p><strong> </strong></p> <p>NOMAD is a spectrometer operating in the spectral ranges between 0.2 and 4.3 μm onboard ExoMars TGO. NOMAD has 3 spectral channels: a solar occultation channel (SO – Solar Occultation; 2.3–4.3 μm), a second infrared channel capable of nadir, solar occultation, and limb sounding (LNO – Limb Nadir and solar Occultation; 2.3–3.8 μm), and an ultraviolet/visible channel (UVIS – Ultraviolet and Visible Spectrometer, 200–650 nm). The infrared channels (SO and LNO) have high spectral resolution (λ/dλ~10,000–20,000) provided by an echelle grating used in combination with an Acousto Optic Tunable Filter (AOTF) which selects diffraction orders. The sampling rate for the solar occultation measurement is 1 second, which provides a good vertical sampling step (~1 km) with higher resolution (~2 km) from the surface to 200 km. Thanks to the instantaneous change of the observing diffraction orders achieved by the AOTF, the SO channel is able to measure five or six different diffraction orders per second in solar occultation mode. In this study, we analyze the solar occultation measurements at diffraction order 134 (3011-3035 cm<sup>-1</sup>), order 136 (3056-3080 cm<sup>-1</sup>), order 168 (3775-3805 cm<sup>-1</sup>), and order 169 (3798-3828 cm<sup>-1</sup>) acquired by the SO channel in order to investigate water vapor vertical distributions.</p> <p>Knowledge of the water vapor vertical profile is important to understand the water cycle and its escape process. Solar occultation measurements by two new spectrometers onboard TGO - NOMAD and Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS) - allows us to daily monitor the water vapor vertical distributions through the whole Martian Year and obtain a good latitudinal coverage for every ~20° of Ls. In 2018, for the first time after 2007, a global dust storm occurred on Mars. It lasted for more than two months (from June to August). Moreover, following the global dust storm, a regional dust storm occurred in January 2019. The NOMAD and ACS observations therefore fully cover the majority of the global and regional dust storms and offer a unique opportunity to study the trace gases distributions during the dust storms. We analyzed those datasets and found a significant increase of water vapor abundances in the middle atmosphere (40-100 km) during the global dust storm from June to mid-September 2018 and the regional dust storm in January 2019. In particular, water vapor reaches very high altitude, at least 100 km, during the global dust storm (Aoki et al., 2019, Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume124, Issue12, Pages 3482-3497, doi:10.1029/2019JE006109). A GCM simulation explained that dust storm related increases of atmospheric temperatures suppress the hygropause, hence reducing ice cloud formation and so allowing water vapor to extend into the middle atmosphere (Neary et al., 2020, Geophysical Research Letters, accepted, Volume47, Issue7, e2019GL084354, doi: 10.1029/2019GL084354). This study presents the results with the extended dataset, which covers a full Mars year. The extended dataset newly includes aphelion season that involves interesting phenomena such as sublimation of water vapor from the northern polar cap and formation of the equatorial cloud belt, which are known as key periods to understand the large north-south hemispheric asymmetries of Mars water vapor. Yet, only a few papers report the water vapor vertical distributions in the aphelion season. The extended dataset also includes the southern summer season (dusty season) in MY 35, which will allow us to compare the water vapor distributions in the global dust storm year with those in the non-global dust storm year. In the presentation, we will discuss the water vapor vertical profiles as well as the aerosols vertical distributions retrieved from the three-year measurements of the TGO/NOMAD.</p>

Cruise and flyby operations of BepiColombo – first results and planned activities

<p>BepiColombo was launched on 20 October 2018 from the European spaceport Kourou in French Guyana and is now on route to Mercury to unveil Mercury’s secrets. BepiColombo with its state of the art and very comprehensive payload will perform measurements to increase our knowledge on the fundamental questions about Mercury’s evolution, composition, interior, magnetosphere, and exosphere. BepiColombo is a joint project between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and consists of two orbiters, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio). </p> <p>On its way BepiColombo will travel 18 times around the Sun until the spacecraft will be put into an polar orbit around Mercury. During its long way through the inner solar system, BepiColombo will perform nine flybys (one at Earth, two at Venus and six at Mercury). However, since the spacecraft is in a stacked configuration during the flybys only some of the instruments on both spacecraft will perform scientific observations. In addition there are plenty of opportunities for further science operations (testing Einstein’s theory during solar conjunctions, listening to gamma ray bursts, or investigation of the solar environment).</p> <p>A status of the mission and instruments, science operations plans during cruise, and first results of measurements taken in the first three years since launch will be given.</p>

Using Data Science Software to Address Health Disparities

The article assesses data science software to evaluate the usefulness of data science technology in addressing concerns such as health disparities. Data science software was analyzed using KDnuggets data related to analytics, data science, and machine learning software. Data science functionalities include computational processes and frameworks that are relevant for healthcare. This study demonstrates the importance of leading applications for conducting data science operations that can improve care in healthcare networks by addressing such factors as health disparities.