NIR Laboratory Measurement of the VERITAS Iceland 2023 Campaign Samples

Abstract

The VERITAS 2023 Iceland analog campaign investigated the surface features of volcanic landscapes at Holuhraun, Askja and Fagradallsfjal in Iceland as analogs to Venus. The campaign consisted of an aerial component to collect multiband airborne radar data and a surface component to characterize in-situ surface properties relevant to radar. The team also acquired near-infrared (NIR) spectra in the wavelength range of the Venus Emissivity Mapper (VEM) instrument, as well as soil and rock samples. The NIR study included in-situ data acquisition using a field emulator of the Venus Emissivity Mapper (VEM) on board NASA’s VERITAS and ESA’s EnVision missions. The VEMulator 2.0 [1, 2, 3] aims to provide a training dataset for scientists to understand the NIR spectral response of various volcanic surfaces collected in-situ using six filters similar to those on the VEM [3]. The team also collected samples representing various geological features, compositions, and surface textures for subsequent analyses in the Planetary Spectroscopy Laboratory (PSL) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR)-Berlin. The main goal of the latter effort is to analyze spectral variations in the collected samples, in order to support the in-situ NIR data acquisition and the airborne radar investigation. This work focuses on the spectroscopy of different particle size ranges, both on and below the surface. The radar scattering properties have some dependence on particle size distributions and on the material composition. Here we show the changes in spectra characteristics as a function of particle sizes.