Synthetic Data Exploration of MESSENGER/XRS Spatial Resolution and Sensitivity Limits

Kurzfassung

The NASA MESSENGER mission, which orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015, provided a wealth of data on the planet's surface composition, topography, and geology. One of the key instruments aboard MESSENGER was the X-ray Spectrometer (XRS)[1], which measured the elemental composition of Mercury's surface by detecting X-ray fluorescence emitted from the planet's surface when it was bombarded by solar X-rays. While the XRS provided valuable insights into Mercury's global composition, it suffered from limitations in spatial resolution, particularly at southern latitudes. This is due to the instrument's design and the geometry of MESSENGER’s highly elliptical polar orbit. To address this limitation, we propose a novel approach to enhance the spatial resolution of XRS-derived compositional maps. By leveraging the redundancy in the XRS data and employing advanced image processing techniques, we aim to extract finer-scale details from the XRS mosaics. This method, which we refer to as synthetic hyper-resolution, has the potential to reveal new insights into Mercury's surface composition and geological history.