Mineralogical analysis and iron abundance estimation of the Moon using the SIR2, HySI and M3 spectrometers on-board the lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1

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• Megha Upendra Bhatt

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• Libri di testo
• Libri di testo universitari

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The work presented in this thesis is focused on mineralogical studies of the Moon aiming to create maps of iron abundances. We used the data from visible to near-infrared (VIS-NIR) spectrometers on-board Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, with our major concentration on the Spectrometer InfraRed-2 (SIR-2) data. The SIR-2 on-ground and in-flight calibrations are discussed. The data reduction method for SIR-2 is explained and integration of the datasets obtained by SIR-2, HySI, and M3 instruments are discussed. We focused on the consistent lunar surface measurements collected by the SIR-2 instrument and used the SIR-2 data for the first time to derive the iron content of the Moon’s surface utilizing 2-μm absorption band parameters. Using both 1-μm and 2-μm absorption band parameters we found a correlation of about 90% between iron abundances estimated by our method and actual laboratory-measured values (from Apollo and Luna datasets). The M3 data measured at the same UTC as the SIR-2 data are used for a comparative study. This study confirms that the 2-μm absorption band can be used effectively to estimate the FeO wt% content of lunar surface materials through their NIR reflectance characteristics. Applications of this method would potentially be of great interest to those missions to the Moon and other planetary bodies carrying spectrometers in the wavelength range between 0.9 and 2.5 μm.

Lingua: Inglese

Pubblicato: 2012