Abstract
Whitepaper #362 submitted to the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032. Topics: surface/geological evolution; Mercury and/or the Moon; solar system formation, dynamics processes, and chronology
Highlights
A planetary body’s bulk elemental composition is set by its formation conditions and source materials, while geological processes such as differentiation and volcanism segregate the elements into different reservoirs
Remote- ping missions outlined on LRO (Vondrak et al, 2010) Camsensing X-ray fluorescence (XRF) is a era lunar basemap in orthographic projection
We describe here a mission concept called Lunar X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (LuXIS)
Summary
A planetary body’s bulk elemental composition is set by its formation conditions and source materials, while geological processes such as differentiation and volcanism segregate the elements into different reservoirs (e.g., primary and secondary crusts, mantle, and core). XRF lines, triggered either by solar X-rays or energetic ions, have characteristic energies intrinsic to atomic energy levels and carry an unambiguous signature of the elemental composition of the emitting bodies. XRF spectroscopy extends measurements to geochemically highly important elements like Mg and Al, and the promise of higherresolution measurements enabled by focusing X-ray optics will help to address multiple important science questions ( section). LuXIS, formerly known as CubeX, is a MiXO-telescope-based lunar mission, whose concept was studied with support from NASA’s Planetary Science Deep Space SmallSat Studies (PSDS3) program (Hong et al, 2018; Stupl et al, 2018). LuXIS is a SmallSat with a compact, highly radiation-tolerant, focusing X-ray telescope that identifies and spatially maps lunar crust and mantle materials excavated by impact craters, and serves as a pathfinder for autonomous precision deep-space navigation using X-ray pulsars
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