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Published March 1998 | public
Journal Article

Observations of Mars and its satellites by the Mars Imaging Camera (MIC) on Planet-B

Abstract

We present the specifications of the Mars Imaging Camera (MIC) on the Planet-B spin-stabilized spacecraft, and key scientific objectives of MIC observations. A non-sun-synchronous orbit of Planet-B with a large eccentricity of about 0.87 around Mars provides the opportunities (1) to observe the same region of Mars at various times of day and various solar phase angles with spatial resolution of about 60 m from a distance of 150 km altitude (at periapsis), and (2) to monitor changes of global atmospheric conditions on Mars near an apoapsis of 15 Mars radii. In addition, (3) several encounters of Planet-B with each of the two Martian satellites are scheduled during the mission lifetime of two years from October 1999 to observe their shapes and surface structures with three color filters, centered on 450, 550, and 650 nm. (4) A search for hypothetical dust rings along the orbits of two satellites will be tried from the forward-scattering region of sunlight.

Additional Information

© 1998 The Society of Geomagnetism and Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences (SGEPSS); The Seismological Society of Japan; The Volcanological Society of Japan; The Geodetic Society of Japan; The Japanese Society for Planetary Sciences. Received: 7 August 1997; Accepted: 30 January 1998. We thank Juro Ishida for providing the original figure 1 used in this draft.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 26, 2023