Thermal emission remote sensing of the moon: Design and development of Diviner lunar radiometer compositional capabilities

Thermal emission remote sensing of planetary bodies provides complementary information regarding surface composition and physical properties. Applied to the Moon, thermal emission remote sensing will allow us to better understand the origins of lunar surface materials. This dissertation describes numerical modeling and experimental laboratory research on designing and developing capabilities to constrain lunar surface composition using the forthcoming Diviner lunar radiometer. Diviner is a nine channel pushbroom mapping radiometer that measures reflected solar and emitted thermal radiation across a broad spectral range (approximately 0.3--400 mum) to measure compositional and thermophysical properties of the lunar surface. When launched in 2009, Diviner will be the first lunar-orbiting multichannel infrared radiometer. In the first part of this dissertation, I describe the design of the 8-mum channels. These channels were optimized using numerical modeling to locate the mid-infrared emissivity maximum (Christiansen feature), which is a good compositional indicator. Next, I describe methods of separating and quantifying compositional and physical properties in thermal channel data. Spectral emissivity, rock abundance, and surface roughness each dominate thermal emission during particular times of the lunar day and I quantify Diviner's sensitivity to spectral emissivity and rock abundance. Next, I describe the Diviner photometric calibrations, which are critical to the quantitative analysis of solar channel data. This section includes a description of the detailed characterization of Diviner's in-flight photometric calibration reference, the solar calibration target. Finally, I present reflectance and emission experiments performed on variable grain size separates for a range of relevant lunar analog minerals. The reflectance measurements included diffuse and specular modes. I also report on early emission measurements in a simulated lunar environment, which is wholly different from Earth or Mars. Taken together, this dissertation extends Diviner's ability to determine the composition and distribution of lunar rocks that may be related to the Moon's structure and evolution.