Neutron Background Measurements by the the MSL Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) Instrument during the First 360 sols of the Surface Operation at Mars

Since first commissioned on sol 3 after landing in August 2012, DAN has been operating successfully and provided a wealth of surface measurement data both in Active mode and in Passive mode operations. Active mode measurements provide a means to determine the characteristics of subsurface in terms of layering structure, content of water equivalent hydrogen (WEH), and/or content of chlorine. Passive mode measurements provide a general background level of low energy (< ~1 keV) neutrons induced by Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) interactions with the Martian atmosphere and the surface material and from Multi Mission Radioisotope Thermonuclear Generator (MMRTG). Passive mode measurements have been done on almost every sols with durations ranging from 1 hour to ~9 hour, covering different times of a day. Extensive numerical simulations have been carried out to aid in interpreting the DAN passive data. Both surface operation and numerical simulations show that the passive data correlate very well with the active data. It was also found that the passive data alone could provide a general trend of WEH content variation along the rover traverse. A methodology to estimate the respective contribution from each source (i.e., MMRTG neutrons and GCR-induced neutrons) for the passive data has been developed and was used to understand the neutron background environment at the Rocknest site, where the rover stayed over an extended period of time (from sol 59 to sol 100). The result shows that the MMRTG contribution to the DAN passive counts was about 60% of the total, and the GCR-induced counts were estimated to be about 40%. Details of all these observations, modeling effort, and analysis and interpretation processes will be presented in the final paper by using the passive data collected through sol 360.