Neutron sources for in-situ planetary science applications

There are a number of future European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA planetary science missions that are in the planning or initial study phases, where the scientific objectives include determining the surface composition, measuring planetary surface heat flow and constraining planetary chronology. The University of Leicester is developing instrumentation for geophysical applications that include γ-ray spectroscopy, γ-ray densitometry and radiometric dating. This paper describes the modelling of a geophysical package, with the Monte Carlo code MCNPX, in order to determine the impact that a neutron source would have on in-situ composition measurements, radiometric dating and, in particular, trace element detection. The suitability of ∅ 2.54×2.54 cm LaBr₃(Ce) detectors in the geophysical package for in-situ missions was examined. ²⁵²Cf, Am-Be and Pu-Be neutron sources were compared in a trade-off study to determine mission suitability, potential for thermal and electric power production, mass and shielding requirements. This study is linked to a parallel examination of the suitability of radioisotope thermal generators for in-situ planetary science applications. The aim of the modelling was to optimise the source type and detector geometry in order to measure the elemental peaks of interest with a precision of 10% or better based on the Poisson statistics of the detected counts above background.