SELENE-2 is the first lunar landing mission in development by the Japanese Space Exploration Agency (JAXA). A broadband seismometer system is the core payload instrument on this mission. Since there is only one lander, a seismic network observation can not be run. Thus, more information from the weak seismic signals shall be obtained using a broadband (0.02-50 Hz) seismometer having 10 times higher sensitivity than that of the Apollo seismometers. More information about SELENE-2 can be found here.

Our Work

In the SELENE-2 project, AEIL is mainly responsible for the development and manufacture of the data acquision and the back-end electronics of the Lunar Broadband Seismometer (LBBS), including:

[1] Command and Telemetry Unit (CTU) interface: LVDS bus for Tele-command (TC)/Telemetry (TM) for all subsystems (data exchange)
[2] Interface to Very Broadband (VBB) and Short Period (SP) sensors: power interface, analog interface for scientific channels and digital serial interface to control VBB functions (gain, mass centering, etc.) and read status flags
[3] Interface to Motor Drive Electronics (MDE): power interface, digital serial interface to control the seismometer deployment on ground and to read House Keeping data.

(see our design here)