MicrOmega-IR is an infrared hyperspectral microscope that is part of the science payload on board the European ''Rosalind Franklin'' rover, tasked to search for

biosignature A biosignature (sometimes called chemical fossil or molecular fossil) is any substance – such as an element, isotope, molecule, or phenomenon – that provides scientific evidence of past or present life on a planet. Measurable ...

s on Mars. The rover is planned to be launched not earlier than 2028. MicrOmega-IR will analyse ''

in situ is a Latin phrase meaning 'in place' or 'on site', derived from ' ('in') and ' ( ablative of ''situs'', ). The term typically refers to the examination or occurrence of a process within its original context, without relocation. The term is use ...

'' the powder material derived from crushed samples collected by the rover's core drill.

Development

The ''MicrOmega''

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is derived from its French name ''Micro observatoire pour la mineralogie, l'eau, les glaces et l'activité''; IR stands for

infrared Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those ...

. It was developed by France's ''

Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale An institute is an organizational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes ca ...

'' at the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...

. France has also flown MicrOmega on other missions such as the 2011

Fobos-Grunt Fobos-Grunt or Phobos-Grunt () was an attempted Russian sample return mission to Phobos (moon), Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. Fobos-Grunt also carried the Chinese Mars orbiter Yinghuo-1 and the tiny Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment f ...

and the ''

Hayabusa2 is an asteroid sample-return mission operated by the Japanese state space agency JAXA. It is a successor to the ''Hayabusa'' mission, which returned asteroid samples for the first time in June 2010. ''Hayabusa2'' was launched on 3 December 2 ...

'' MASCOT mobile lander currently exploring asteroid Ryugu. France is also developing a variant called MacrOmega Near-IR Spectrometer for the

Martian Moons Exploration Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) is a robotic space probe set for launch in 2026 to bring back the first samples from Mars' largest moon Phobos. Developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and announced on 9 June 2015, MMX will l ...

(MMX) lander, a Japanese

sample-return mission A sample-return mission is a spacecraft mission to collect and return samples from an extraterrestrial location to Earth for analysis. Sample-return missions may bring back merely atoms and molecules or a deposit of complex compounds such as lo ...

to Mars' moon Phobos. The Principal Investigator of the MicrOmega-IR for the ''Rosalind Franklin'' rover is Jean-Pierre Bibring, a French astronomer and planetary scientist at the ''Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale''. Co-PIs are astrobiologists Frances Westall and Nicolas Thomas. MicrOmega was developed by a consortium including: * IAS (Orsay, France) *

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(Meudon, France) * CBM (Orléans, France) *

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(Bern, Switzerland) *

Russian Space Research Institute The Russian Space Research Institute (; SRI RAS, Russian abbreviation: ИКИ РАН, IKI RAN) is the leading organization of the Russian Academy of Sciences on space exploration to benefit fundamental science. It was formerly known as the Space ...

(IKI) (Moscow, Russia)

Overview

MicrOmega-IR is a visible and infrared hyperspectral microscope that is designed to characterize the texture and composition of crushed samples presented to the instrument. Its objective is to study mineral grain assemblages in detail to try to unravel their geological origin, structure and composition, including potential organics. These data will be vital for interpreting past and present geological processes and environments on Mars. Because MicrOmega-IR is an imaging instrument, it can also be used to identify grains that are particularly interesting, and assign them as targets for Raman and

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observations. It is composed of 2 microscopes: MicrOmega/VIS has a spatial sampling of approximately 4 μm, working in 4 colors in the visible range. The other one is the MicrOmega/NIR hyperspectral microscope working in the spectral range 0.95 μm - 3.65 μm with a spatial sampling of 20 μm per pixel. Its main supporting components include:

Development

Overview

See also

References