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The Design and Engineering of Curiosity pp 275–293Cite as

Curiosity’s Environmental Sensing Instruments

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Abstract

Environmental sensing instruments include the Rover Environmental Monitoring Suite (REMS), a package of several meteorological instruments, and the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD), which measures the radiation dose at the surface. Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) straddles the boundary between remote and environmental sensing; in passive mode it detects ambient neutrons, and it can also bombard the surface with neutrons to explore for subsurface water and light elements.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    RAD’s design and function is described in Hassler et al. (2012); two post-landing summaries of RAD performance and results are Matthiä et al. (2016) and Zeitlin et al. (2016)

  2. 2.

    Betina Pavri, personal communication, September 22, 2017

  3. 3.

    Hassler et al. (2013); Don Hassler, personal communication, email dated November 10, 2017

  4. 4.

    Rafkin et al. (2014)

  5. 5.

    Scot Rafkin, personal communication, email dated March 5, 2017

  6. 6.

    The paper of record for DAN is Mitrofanov et al. (2012). A post-landing summary is in Mitrofanov et al. (2014).

  7. 7.

    The main paper describing REMS is Gómez-Elvira et al. (2012). Post-landing articles summarizing REMS performance and results are Pla-Garcia et al. (2016), Smith et al. (2016), and Vasavada et al. (2017)

  8. 8.

    Rafkin et al. (2016)

  9. 9.

    Pla-Garcia et al. (2016)

  10. 10.

    Gómez-Elvira et al. (2012)

  11. 11.

    Martínez et al. (2016)

  12. 12.

    Smith et al. (2016)

  13. 13.

    Gómez-Elvira et al. (2012)

  14. 14.

    Ashwin Vasavada, personal communication, email dated April 17, 2017

REFERENCES

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Planetary Society, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Emily Lakdawalla

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  1. Emily Lakdawalla
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Lakdawalla, E. (2018). Curiosity’s Environmental Sensing Instruments. In: The Design and Engineering of Curiosity. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68146-7_8

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