MIMOS II is the miniaturised Mössbauer spectrometer, developed by Dr. Göstar Klingelhöfer at the

Johannes Gutenberg University The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (german: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) is a public university, public research university in Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany, named after the printer Johannes Gutenberg since 1946. With approx ...

Mainz Mainz () is the capital and largest city of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Mainz is on the left bank of the Rhine, opposite to the place that the Main (river), Main joins the Rhine. Downstream of the confluence, the Rhine flows to the north-we ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, that is used on the

Mars Exploration Rover NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission was a robotic space mission involving two Mars rovers, ''Spirit (rover), Spirit'' and ''Opportunity (rover), Opportunity'', exploring the planet Mars. It began in 2003 with the launch of the two rover ...

s ''

Spirit Spirit or spirits may refer to: Liquor and other volatile liquids * Spirits, a.k.a. liquor, distilled alcoholic drinks * Spirit or tincture, an extract of plant or animal material dissolved in ethanol * Volatile (especially flammable) liquids, ...

'' and ''

Opportunity Opportunity may refer to: Places * Opportunity, Montana, an unincorporated community, United States * Opportunity, Nebraska, an unincorporated community, United States * Opportunity, Washington, a former census-designated place, United States * 3 ...

'' for close-up investigations on the Martian surface of the mineralogy of iron-bearing rocks and soils. MIMOS II uses a

Cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, pr ...

-57 gamma ray source of about 300 mCi at launch which gave a 6-12 hr time for acquisition of a standard MB spectrum during the primary mission on Mars, depending on total Fe content and which Fe-bearing phases are present. Cobalt-57 has a half-life of only 271.8 days (hence the extended measuring times now on Mars after over a decade). The MIMOS II sensorheads used on Mars are approx 9 cm x 5 cm x 4 cm and weigh about 400g The MIMOS II system also includes a circuit board of about 100g.

References

Further reading