The Panoramic Camera (Pancam) Instrument For The Exomars Rover

12 - 16 November, 2007 The ExoMars rover is the first element of the ESA Aurora programme and is scheduled to launch the Pasteur exobiology payload to Mars in 2013. The 0.76 kg Panoramic Camera will provide multispectral stereo images with 34° field-of-view (580 µrad/pixel) and high resolution (85 µrad/pixel) monoscopic “zoom” images with 5° field-of-view. The stereo Wide Angle Cameras (WAC) are based on Beagle 2 Stereo Camera System heritage [1]. The Panoramic Camera instrument is designed to fulfil the digital terrain mapping requirements of the mission [2] using 500 mm baseline stereo; as well as providing multispectral geological imaging and colour and panoramic images. These capabilities compliment the other remote sensing instruments (i.e. MIMA and WISDOM) provide a panoramic “remote sensing” view of the Martian terrain. This geological and mineralogical data context then assists the rover operators and science teams in deciding where to send the rover to perform the next phase of the experiment cycle [3]. Once data from the contact instruments has indicated a suitable location to perform a vertical survey with the drill, PanCam can again be used to observe drill tailings and retrieved subsurface samples before ingestion into the rest of the Pasteur payload. Additionally the High Resolution Camera (HRC) can be used for high resolution imaging of interesting targets detected in the WAC panoramas, up to 100 m distant and of inaccessible locations on crater or valley walls. Further goals of the PanCam experiment are solar images for water vapour abundance and dust optical depth measurements [4], dust devil imaging and meteor observations [5]. This presentation will describe how the technical design of PanCam enables the scientific objectives to be discussed in a separate presentation [6]. References: [1] Griffiths, A.D., Coates, A.J., Josset, J.-L., Paar, G., Hofmann, B., Pullan, D., Ruffer, P., Sims, M.R., Pillinger, C.T., (2005), The Beagle 2 stereo camera system, Planet. Space Sci. 53, 1466 – 1488, doi:10.1016/j.pss.2005.07.007. [2] Paar, G., Oberst, J., Barnes, D.P., Griffiths, A.D., Jaumann, R., Coates, A.J., Muller, J.P., Gao, Y., Li, R., (2007), Geophys Res Abs 9, EGU2007-A-03901. [3] Griffiths, A.D., Coates, A.J., Jaumann, R., Michaelis, H., Paar, G., Barnes, D., Josset, J-L. and the PanCam Team (2006), International Journal of Astrobiology, doi:10.1017/S1473550406003387. [4] Smith, P. and Lemmon, M. (1999), JGR 104, 8975– 8985. [5] Christou, A.A., Griffiths, A.D., McAuliffe, J. P., Koschny, D., Patzold, M., Oberst, J., Vaubaillon, J., Withers, P., Chappelow, J. E. (2007), EMSEC07 (this conference). [6] Jaumann, R., Coates, A. J., Hauber, E., Griffiths, A.D. and the ExoMars PanCam Team (2007), EMSEC07 (this conference).