Design of an enhanced MEIGA-MetNet dust micro-sensor able to perform gas sensing in Mars atmosphere

Mars MetNet Mission is a collaborative project involving research groups of Finland, Russia and Spain, with the aim of providing a network of several tens of atmospheric stations along the Martian surface. MEIGA-MetNet payload is the Spanish contribution to this mission, where an extensive atmospheric science payload on board a lander with restricting mass and power budgets (45 g and 1 W in the previous version Dust Sensor I). Infrared Lab from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (LIR-UC3M) has faced the design and development of a micro-sensor, based on infrared (IR) detection principles, both scattering and absorption, focused on dust characterization in terms of the particle size distribution, carbon dioxide detection and soil temperature. In this context, the proposed work addresses the enhancement of the current version of the dust sensor, by providing gas sensing features for CO2, CO and water vapor compounds. Other compounds like methane could be addressed in future upgrades of the sensor as they can be detected by similar principia. Also in the final version, an image sensor for the measurement of both, soil and atmosphere temperature, should be included. For these purposes, a full radiometric model (including source, detector, optics and spectroscopic databases) has been built as a tool for system design and simulations. Finally, a new gas sensing system design is proposed where the most relevant specifications as detection limits and uncertainties are estimated through software modeling.