Development of the probing in-situ with Neutron and Gamma rays (PING) instrument for planetary science applications

Parsons, A. M.; Bodnarik, J.; Bürger, Dan; Evans, L. G.; Floyd, S. R.; Lim, L. F.; McClanahan, T. P.; Namkung, M.; Nowicki, S.; Schweitzer, Jeffrey S.; Starr, R.; Trombka, J. I.

doi:10.1109/nssmic.2011.6154608

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“…Underground power and communications lines connect the operations building to the test monuments. Details of the specific PING measurements are given in Section 3.1 and further information about the test facility can be found in [14,15].…”

Section: Outdoor Neutron-gamma Ray Instrument Test Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

Time-resolved neutron/gamma-ray data acquisition for in situ subsurface planetary geochemistry

Bodnarik

Bürger

et al. 2013

Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A:

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The current gamma-ray/neutron instrumentation development effort at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center aims to extend the use of active pulsed neutron interrogation techniques to probe the subsurface elemental composition of planetary bodies in situ. Previous NASA planetary science missions, that used neutron and/or gamma-ray spectroscopy instruments, have relied on neutrons produced from galactic cosmic rays. One of the distinguishing features of this effort is the inclusion of a high intensity 14.1 MeV pulsed neutron generator synchronized with a custom data acquisition system to time each event relative to the pulse. With usually only one opportunity to collect data, it is difficult to set a priori time-gating windows to obtain the best possible results. Acquiring time-tagged, event-byevent data from nuclear induced reactions provides raw data sets containing channel/energy, and event time for each gamma ray or neutron detected. The resulting data set can be plotted as a function of time or energy using optimized analysis windows after the data are acquired. Time windows can now be chosen to produce energy spectra that yield the most statistically significant and accurate elemental composition results that can be derived from the complete data set. The advantages of post-processing gamma-ray time-tagged event-by-event data in experimental tests using our prototype instrument will be demonstrated.

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Section: Outdoor Neutron-gamma Ray Instrument Test Sitementioning

confidence: 99%