The BepiColombo SERENA/ELENA Instrument On-Ground Testing with the ELENA Special Check Out Equipment (SCOE)

TL;DR

This paper details the ground testing setup and software systems for the ELENA instrument, part of the BepiColombo mission, focusing on configuration, data handling, and simulation tools aligned with ESA standards.

Contribution

It introduces the ELENA SCOE testing system and the associated software framework, demonstrating compliance with ESA standards and integration into the BepiColombo ground segment.

Findings

Successful configuration and testing of ELENA instrument components.

Development of ESA-standard compliant software for data handling.

Prototype of the BepiColombo science ground segment pipeline.

Abstract

The neutral particles sensor ELENA (Emitted Low Energy Neutral Atoms) for the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury (in the SERENA instrument suite) is devoted to measure low energetic neutral atoms. The main goal of the experiment is measuring the sputtering emission from planetary surfaces, from E=20eV up to E=5keV, within 1D (2 deg. x 76 deg. ). ELENA original project had also a particle discrimination system based on Time-of-Flight (TOF) of particles through the shutter on the Micro Channel Plates detector (MCP), it has been withdrawn from the flight model due to design and development problems. The ELENA SCOE is the configuration/testing system of ELENA, it allows to command operations and to set up configuration parameters on the instrument and to monitor the incoming data. The TC/TM simulation/encoding/decoding software is developed respecting the CCSDS/ECSS standards implemented by ESA, and it's SCOS2000 compatible. TC generation, HK data monitoring and basic science data analysis are operated by the SERENA EGSE, developed by the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), Helsinki, Finland. The data stream outcoming from the EGSE is then preprocessed from TM to user readable formats: FITS and then ASCII csv tables with metadata collected in a detached XML file, called label. This task is performed using the PacketLib, ProcessorLib, and DISCoS (PPD) framework and is going to be used as the first level prototype of the BepiColombo Science Ground Segment processing pipeline, based in ESAC, Madrid, Spain and implemented using the PDS4 data format.