2024-04-07 03:00:17
Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) spacecraft. Credit: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) / Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK)
NASA’s MEGANE, developed for the MMX mission to study Mars’ moons, has been delivered to JAXA for integration, representing a milestone in space cooperation and scientific exploration.
On March 14, NASA delivered its gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer instrument to JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) for integration into JAXA’s MMX (Mars Moon Exploration) mission spacecraft and final system-level testing.
NASA’s Mars-Moon Gamma-ray and Neutron (MEGANE) probe, developed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, in collaboration with colleagues from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, will play a central role. A role in the MMX mission, which aims to characterize and determine the origin of the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos and deliver a sample from Phobos to Earth.
US and Japanese team members gather around and discuss the gamma-ray spectrometer portion of the MEGANE instrument during its development at Johns Hopkins APL. Credit: NASA/JAXA/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman
Scientific goals and instrument capabilities
Scientists suspect that the asteroid-sized bodies are a remnant of an ancient collision between Mars and a large impactor or are themselves asteroids captured by Mars’ gravity. By measuring the energies of neutrons and gamma rays emitted from the surface of Phobos, MEGANE will allow MMX to “see” the elemental composition of the lunar surface and help pin down the moon’s likely source.
“MEGANE will be a key instrument in the MMX, and will make a major contribution to the goal of understanding the origin of the Mars moons,” said Thomas Statler, MEGANE program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “NASA is pleased to see MEGANE ready for integration, another step in the collaboration NASA’s ongoing collaboration with JAXA on this groundbreaking mission.”
Device development and future tasks
The device team got the green light last fall to send MEGANE (pronounced meh-GAH-nay, the Japanese word for “eyeglasses”) after the project’s long-standing review board assessed the device’s readiness. This milestone marked the end of a demanding 6-year design and development process that met NASA’s cost and schedule constraints.
“Passing the pre-ship review and hardware delivery are significant steps for all those working on MEGANE,” said APL’s David Lawrence, the device’s principal investigator. “Like all spaceflight builds, we’ve had challenges getting to this point, but we’re excited to see how MEGANE works with all the other spacecraft components for this exciting MMX mission.”
With MEGANE now in Japan, the MMX team will begin integrating the science instruments, including MEGANE, with other spacecraft components before putting the entire system through a series of tests ahead of launch, scheduled for fiscal year 2026, aboard a JAXA H3 rocket.
“For me personally, I’m looking forward to all the integration and testing that’s to come,” said Sarah Bouchor, a space systems engineer at SES and MEGANE I&T’s chief engineer. “I love rockets, so I’m really interested in seeing how they build their spacecraft and then follow it for launch and liftoff operations.”
MEGANE was developed under NASA’s Discovery Program, which provides low-cost access to space. The Discovery Program is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The instrument science team includes researchers from APL , LLNL, Marietta College, NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, and JAXA.
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