Development of miniaturised spectroscopy and imaging cameras for the exploration of Europa

Europa has long been targeted as an astrobiological body (moon) of interest due to evidence of a subsurface liquid water ocean and energy sources which may make the moon habitable. Landed missions to Europa have been proposed by several space agencies including NASA. With Raman spectrometers gaining space heritage with SHERLOC and SuperCam onboard NASA’s Perseverance rover and the Raman Laser Spectrometer onboard ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover, it has been baselined as an instrument for the NASA Europa lander mission. One challenge associated with a mission to Europa is its radiation environment, which is a particular issue for semiconductor-based detectors in the instruments.

NASA’s Europa lander mission is currently in an instrument technology development phase. Included in this is the development of a combined Raman spectroscopy and context imaging instrument, the Compact Integrated Raman Spectrometer (CIRS).

In this thesis, a dual camera system is designed and developed for the CIRS instrument as part of its technology readiness development. Both cameras are fully characterised, and in order to ensure the camera systems suitability for the Europa lander mission, modelling of the detector performance and the effects of the environment on the detectors is carried out. Detector radiation damage campaigns are performed, where the detectors are subject to Europa representative levels of protons. The results of the modelling and campaigns are used to provide recommendations for detector operation. In addition to this, the thesis presents results and Raman spectra from the first end-to-end operation of the CIRS instrument with the newly developed camera system for the Europa lander mission using an analogue sample set.

This work culminates in a fully tested combined camera system that has been radiation qualified and confirmed to be suitable for the science requirements associated with the proposed mission to Europa.