Studying Dust as a Step to Safely Sending Humans Back to the Moon: Fine-Particle Terrestrial Mineral Spectra in the UV-VIS-MIR Acquired by the TREX SSERVI Team

Kurzfassung

A primary objective of the TREX SSERVI team (trex.psi.edu) is to study dust in distributed laboratories and apply the knowledge gained to interpreting surface characteristics of the Moon, asteroids, martian moons, and other airless bodies to ultimately increase the safety of crewed missions to these surfaces. The focus of this abstract is spectroscopy of fine particulate (<10 µm) samples measured over the broad spectral range of ultraviolet (UV) to visible/near infrared (VNIR) to mid-infrared (MIR) (~0.22 to 25 µm) using reflectance and emission spectroscopy. Throughout the course of our grant we will be studying 3 general sample groups: terrestrial minerals, meteorites (request approved), and ultimately lunar materials (request pending). Although not presented here, we are also conducting other relevant experiments with our dust samples that include: shock/impact studies, sample irradiation, dust/ice mixtures with spectroscopic study, plus measurements of our samples using Raman and Mössbauer spectroscopies. Here we present the work we are doing with the terrestrial mineral samples using reflectance and emission spectroscopy.