Enhancing The In Situ Exploration of Planetary Surfaces Using The Advanced Multispectral Infrared Microimager (AMIM)

Future planetary missions to the surfaces of the Moon, Mars, asteroids/comets, and Ocean Worlds will need instruments that can maximize scientific return, but maintain low mass, size, and power that can be accommodated on mass and power-constrained landers or rovers. The Advanced Multispectral Infrared Microimager (AMIM) - a compact microscopic imager developed for future planetary missions - provides in situ spatially-correlated mineralogical and microtextural information of rocks and soils at the microscale that would enable geological interpretations of planetary surfaces, support traverse characterization, and facilitate the selection of samples for onboard analysis with other instruments.

AMIM features compact, low-power multispectral LED arrays coated with narrow-bandpass filters, an adjustable focus mechanism capable of imaging near and far, and a visible/infrared camera capable of imaging from the visible to the shortwave-infrared (VNIR/SWIR, 0.4 to 2.6 μm; expandable to 4 μm). AMIM is particularly well-suited for detecting and mapping Fe-bearing igneous and oxide minerals, carbonates, OH/H2O-bearing minerals, and ices. These minerals are of cross-cutting importance in planetary science, because some or all of them are found on planetary surfaces, and are indicative of past and/or present geologic processes.

AMIM advances beyond the capabilities of current 3-band imagers in the visible or multispectral imagers that operate in the VNIR (0.4-1.0 µm), which are limited to detecting Fe-bearing minerals. The expanded coverage in the SWIR and narrow bandpasses (FWHM < 50 nm) enable AMIM to discriminate both iron and non-iron bearing mineralogies with greater fidelity compared to these instruments or similar imagers with wider bandpasses (> 100 nm). AMIM's approach eliminates the need for mechanical or complex systems such as a filter wheel, grating system, scan mirrors, multiple detectors, or tunable filters. This reduces the mass, size, power consumption, and complexity of the instrument enabling it to be deployed at the end of a robotic arm on a compact rover or lander. Thus, AMIM would provide many of the capabilities that are commonly associated with orbital instruments such as CRISM on MRO or M3 on Chandrayaan 1, but at a size and mass comparable to current microscopic imagers for landed science.