The MicroMed sensor, which during the ExoMars 2020 mission will be used to analyze dust in the Martian atmosphere near the surface of the celestial body, began the long journey that will take him to the Red Planet. In the coming days the instrument will reach Moscow, where it will be integrated into the sensor suite known as Dust Complex. Later it will reach Cannes where it will be installed on the Exomars fixed station (Surface Platform), awaiting its launch in less than a year.
MicroMed is a dust sensor, it will analyze atmospheric dust at the surface of Mars thanks to a sampling pump. The made in Italy instrument will be inserted in a suite entirely dedicated to dust called Dust complex, with a Russian scientific manager, inside there will be a sensor that measures the movement of the sand, that is the movement of the larger grains that jump on the ground and that then with their impact on the surface they make the dust rise.
MicroMed was conceived and developed by the team of researchers of the National Institute of Astrophysics (Inaf) coordinated by Francesca Esposito. The Italian Space Agency (ASI), the Campania Region, the Lecco Campus of the Polytechnic of Milan, the Inaf groups of Rome, Bologna and Arcetri, the Spanish Institute of Aerospace Technique (Inta) also contributed to its realization. of Madrid, the Space Research Institute (Iki) in Moscow and the companies Marotta, Gestione Silo and TransTech. On the first of August 2019 the sensor left the Infaf Capodimonte Observatory and began the journey that will take him to Moscow. During the ExoMars 2020 mission, organized by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos), the data collected by the tool will allow us to understand how dust rises on Mars and to discover if this phenomenon is also present on the Red Planet it is accompanied by the presence of an atmospheric electric field: all useful information for the realization of climate models of the celestial body.