Abstract
Abstract In the remote detection of mineral compositions of planetary surface materials on airless bodies, space weathering is an obstacle which makes reflectance spectra redder and darker and weakens spectral features. This study attempts to model an effect of space weathering due to vapor coating by accounting for the change in surface reflectivity of regolith particles wherein nanophase-reduced iron (npFe0) particles are concentrated on their surfaces. When applied to a suite of reflectance spectra of lunar soils having different degrees of space weathering, this model can estimate the degrees of space weathering in terms of the thicknesses of the coating layer and provide an absorption coefficient spectrum of the host material.
Highlights
Visible and near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy has been a useful method for remotely detecting mineralogy of planetary surface materials
These results show that reflectance spectra of lunar soils of different maturity can be reasonably reproduced if given a suite of compositionally similar soils and if the derived coating thickness has a good positive correlation with Is/FeO, with the exception of the Apollo 14 suite (Fig. 5)
A new scheme of applying Hapke’s space weathering model has been proposed which accounts for the change in the surface reflectivity of a vapor-coated particle
Summary
Visible and near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy has been a useful method for remotely detecting mineralogy of planetary surface materials. In the case of airless bodies, space weathering effects may be so strong that their surface reflectance spectra show reddened continua, lowered albedo, and attenuated absorption features (e.g., Pieters et al, 1993), all of which make it more difficult to use important diagnostic features for detecting component minerals and their chemical compositions. The exposed surfaces develop radiation damage, vapor- and sputter-deposited coatings, and melt products, including agglutinates. One form of space weathering products is a vapor coating containing nanophase-reduced iron (npFe0) particles around each regolith particle. The simulation of micrometeorite bombardment has been proven to form a vapor-deposited layer containing npFe0 particles (Sasaki et al, 2001). Effect on the boundary reflectivity of regolith particles and to subsequently apply this model to reflectance spectra of lunar soils
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