The Negative Ions at the Lunar Surface (NILS) Instrument on the Chang’E-6 Mission
Abstract The Negative Ions at the Lunar Surface (NILS) instrument is a compact mass resolving negative ion and electron analyser flown on the Chinese Chang’E-6 mission to the Moon. NILS measures negative ions and electrons in the energy range of 3 eV/q to 3 keV/q with a mass resolution m $/\Delta $ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mo>/</mml:mo> <mml:mi>Δ</mml:mi> </mml:math> m of about 2. The mass resolution is sufficient to separate charge-converted solar wind protons and sputtered negatively charged atoms form the surface. An electro-magnetic electron suppression system allows to switch between electron and ion measurements. The fan-shaped field of view is divided into 16 discrete angular pixels that are scanned sequentially. For each viewing direction, an electron and an ion energy spectrum is acquired in 4.06 s. NILS has a mass of 919 g, excluding cables and multi-layer insulation. Power consumption is on average 2.7 W during nominal operations.
Authors
- Jonas Olsen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1086-6265)
- Joakim Peterson
- Andreas Edström
- Romain Canu-Blot (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0642-9476)
- Xiao‐Dong Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0574-4423)
- Aibing Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3919-7843)
- Vesa Alatalo
- Martin Wieser (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1760-210X)
- S. Barabash (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3396-4415)
- Máté Kerényi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2177-9546)
- Leif Kalla
- Magnus Oja
- Stefan Karlsson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9960-0070)
- D. Upton (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1858-6436)
- Neil Melville
- Thomas Maynadié
- Wenjing Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2139-1242)
- Yongliao Zou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2744-1677)
- Daniel Stålnacke
- Hanyou Zhu
- Hao Dou
- Qiong Wang
Institutions
- Swedish Institute of Space Physics (SE)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- National Space Science Center (CN)
- Space Engineering University (CN)
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- European Space Research and Technology Centre (NL)
- Umeå University (SE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Space Science Reviews
- Published
- 2025-04-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-025-01162-w
- Citations
- 5
- Primary Topic
- Planetary Science and Exploration
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 5.77
Funders
- European Space Agency