Abstract
The Lunar Penetrating Radar (LPR) is one of the important scientific payloads in China’s Chang’E-3 (CE-3) to image within 100 m below the lunar surface. The acquired LPR data is significant for the research of lunar geological structure. Based on the sedimentary mechanism of lunar regolith, the regolith contains many rocks with different sizes. These local anomalies appear as diffraction in LPR data, which reduces the data quality and limits the structural analysis of lunar regolith. According to the kinematics characteristics of rock caused diffraction, we transform these problems to a problem of steep dip decreasing. To reach this goal, we adopt a data preprocessing workflow to improve the quality of the radar image, firstly. Then, a dip filter based on adaptive f-x empirical mode decomposition (EMD) is proposed to extract the rocks in the regolith and the corresponding removed IMF map indicates the degree of rock enrichment and highlights regolith-basement interface. Both simulation and LPR CH-2 data present a great performance. Finally, according to the processed result, we locate the position of each rock and highlight the contact interface of regolith and the basement rock.
Highlights
Chang’E-3 landed at 340.4875∘E, 44.1189∘N on the Moon on 14 December 2013 on a new region that has not been explored before in the largest basin, the Mare Imbrium [1]
According to the processed result, we locate the position of each rock and highlight the contact interface of regolith and the basement rock
The Lunar Penetrating Radar (LPR) equipped on Yutu Rover detected the lunar geological structure in the Northern Imbrium
Summary
Chang’E-3 landed at 340.4875∘E, 44.1189∘N on the Moon on 14 December 2013 on a new region that has not been explored before in the largest basin, the Mare Imbrium [1]. The dual-frequency Lunar Penetrating Radar aboard the Yutu Rover provides a unique opportunity to map the subsurface structure to a depth of several hundreds of metres from the low-frequency channel (CH-1, 60 MHz) and the nearsurface stratigraphic structure of the regolith from the highfrequency channel (CH-2, 500 MHz). The LPR provides an accurate detection result with high resolution from highfrequency observations [2]. LPR data processing and initial results are first presented by NAOC [3]. Initial analysis of the LPR observations, especially that from the CH-1, indicates that there are more than nine subsurface layers from the surface to a depth of ∼360m [1]. The onboard Lunar Penetrating Radar conducted a 114-m-long profile, which measured a thickness of ∼5 m of the lunar regolith layer and detected three underlying basalt units at depths of 195, 215, and 345 m. Dong et al and Zhang et al calculated the parameters of regolith [8, 9]
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