Remote, In Situ, and Synchrotron Studies for Science and Exploration 2 (RISE2)

Drs. Watkins, Dyar, and Siegler will contribute technical assistance and support scientific analysis for the SSERVI project entitled Coordinated Observations of the Regolith for Exploration and Science (CORES). Dr. Watkins will lead photometric investigations of anomalous lunar surface features using LROC images and will produce maps of photometric parameters to compare with laboratory measurements from the Planetary Surface Texture Lab. She will also conduct boulder distribution analyses to support regolith production studies. Dr. Dyar will provide natural minerals and mixtures for experiments. She will also undertake Mössbauer and Raman measurements of lunar and synthetic samples used for other spectroscopic analyses, and assist with work to understand how transmission and reflectance spectra of hydrogen are affected by bulk or mineral-specific composition. A related project includes developing machine learning algorithms to classify asteroids based on meteorite spectra. Dr. Siegler will aid in modeling the distribution of rocks, volatiles, and density as a function of depth. He will primarily focus on combining data and models from the Diviner Lunar Radiometer with data from the Chang’E 2 microwave radiometer, working with other CORES Co-I’s to combine multiple wavelength data sets to address the regolith, rock, and volatile distribution. The undergraduate student will work with Dyar on mineral preparation and spectral data acquisition and interpretation. Collectively, they will contribute to interpretation of all results, abstracts and presentations for meetings, and writing of papers. They will also attend monthly team telecons and an annual team meeting, hosted at APL. Deliverables will include reporting progress on research or other SSERVI-related goals at team meetings at least semi-annually and a written annual progress report.