The heat is on – in the Planetary Emissivity Laboratory (PEL) at DLR Berlin

The Institute for Planetary Research has an expertise in spectroscopy of minerals, rocks, meteorites, and organic matter, build up in more than two decades. The available equipment allows spectroscopy from the visible to TIR range using transmittance and emission spectroscopy. The institute has an outstanding heritage in designing and building infrared remote-sensing instruments for planetary missions. The heart of the spectroscopic facilities is the Planetary Emissivity Laboratory (PEL) which has been completely refurbished in the last two years. The PEL allows now to measure the emissivity of planetary analogue materials from 3 to 50 µm for very fine grained samples. We will report here on the next development step of the PEL, which is the addition of a planetary simulation chamber. This chamber will allow to measure samples under vacuum and at temperatures up to 500°C. After this upgrade the PEL will be the first lab that can routinely measure the emissivity of fine grained samples from 1 to 50 µm over an extremely wide range of temperatures.