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A Coradini, G Piccioni, S Amici, R Bianchi, F Capaccioni, M.T. Capria, M.C. De Sanctis, A.M. Di Lellis, S. Espinasse (CNR-IAS,Rome-Italy), C. Federico (Universit\'{e} degli Studi di Perugia), S. Fonti (Universit\'{e} di Lecce), G. Arnold (DLR Institut f\"{u}r Planetenerkundung), S.K. Atreya (U. of Michigan), T. Owen (U. of Hawaii), M. Blecka (Space Research Ctr, PAS), M Tacconi, S Pieri (Alenia Difesa, Officine Galileo)
The study of the Martian subsurface will provide important constraints on the nature, timing and duration of alteration and sedimentation processes on Mars, as well as on the complex interactions between the surface and the atmosphere. This study will permit to infer the history of erosion, transport and deposition of loose material. The mineralogy of the Martian surface can be dominated by alteration processes: it will be essential to study the mineralogy of deeper layer, where a more limited alteration took place. Up to present, the Viking and Pathfinder investigations have studied only the upper layers of the soil. Ma-Miss experiment (Mars Multispectral Imager for Subsurface Studies) is perfectly suited to perform multispectral imaging of the drilled layers. Ma-Miss is a miniaturized near-infrared imaging spectrometer in the range 0.8-2.8 mm. The data are acquired through an optical window on the drill wall: through this window the inner surface of the hole is illuminated by a lamp. The image is acquired by an array of optical fibers simulating a slit. An optical system situated inside the drill will permit to perform spectroscopy and to observe details from few tenths to hundreds of microns. The reduced volumes and the drill particular architecture, lead to consider as image transport system an optical fibers coherent bundle. The target lighting is done by means of a dedicated optical fibers bundle while an imaging relay focuses the target on the fiber optics bundle optical plane. Ma-Miss is a very flexible experiment therefore the observation strategy can be adjusted to the available resources of mass memory and telemetry. Ma-Miss can acquire in different observation modes, the high-level ones being the "ring mode" and the "column" mode. One image ring is built up by acquiring contiguous images of Ma-Miss slit. One column acquisition instead is obtained by acquiring slit images on the wall at different levels. The nominal spectral resolution is about 20 nm.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: piccioni@ias.rm.cnr.it