The Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3 or "M-cubed") is an imaging spectrometer designed to map the mineral content of the Moon's surface. The primary scientific objectives are to characterize and map the lunar surface composition in the context of its geologic evolution and to assess the Moon's mineral resources at high resolution with the goals of studying the origin and evolution of the lunar crust and mantle, identifying and assessing deposits containing volatile species, and identifying and evaluating concentrations of unusual or unexpected minerals.

The following text summarizes the NASA public website for the
  Moon Mineralogy Mapper, http://m3.jpl.nasa.gov/.
 
 
  Instrument Overview
  ===================
    The Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) was a near-infrared imaging
    spectrometer of the pushbroom type on-board the Indian Space
    Research Organization's (ISRO) Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft that
    launched on 22 October 2008.  M3 measured the spectral range from
    430 to 3000 nm, had a 40-km-wide field of view from a 100-km orbit,
    and operated in a high resolution (70 m/pixel) target mode or a
    lower resolution (140 m/pixel) global mode.
 
    Originally scheduled to make target and global observations from a
    100-km circular polar obit for two years, the first M3 imaging data
    were acquired on 18 and 19 November 2008 using both the global and
    target imaging modes.  Several days later on 22 November, M3 acquired
    its first scientific images of Oriental Basin.  Data acquisition from
    the 100-km primary science orbit continued into May 2009.  On 19 May,
    the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was raised to a 200-km to compensate for
    star tracker failures and orbiter temperatures that were higher than
    expected.  On 28 August 2009 ISRO abruptly lost radio contact with the
    Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft and officially terminated the mission three
    days later.  After ten months in operation, M3 had obtained over 4.6
    billion spectra of the lunar surface, and its low resolution spatial
    coverage encompassed nearly the entire Moon.
 
    The instrument was funded by NASA's Discovery Mission of Opportunity
    program and was designed, built, and tested by a partnership between
    Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Brown University, USA.  Preliminary
    results are presented by Pieters, et al. (2009b) [PIETERSETAL2009B]
    and Pieters, et al. (2009c) [PIETERSETAL2009C].
 
 
  Instrument Characteristics
  ==========================
    M3 was a near-infrared imaging spectrometer with a compact system of
    optics in the Offner design which produces little or not optical
    distortion, either spatially or spectrally.  The instrument included
    a robust on-board calibrator and was cooled by a multi-stage passive
    cooler.
 
    M3 was designed to operate in two distinct modes. The target mode was
    used for full resolution imaging of specific science targets, and the
    global mode was used for low resolution global imaging.  M3 used a
    pushbroom method in which the field of view was passively swept through
    the lunar scene below it, along a line perpendicular to the slit,
    simultaneously exposing all 600 spatial pixels in an entire row using
    260 spectral channels (in target mode).
 
    The characteristics of the instrument are summarized here:
 
      Telescope             : f/2.7, all-aluminum optics
      Grating               : Single dual-blaze electron-beam grating
      Detector              : Single two-dimensional HgCdTe array
      Mass                  : 8 kg
      Volume                : 25 x 18 x 21 cm
      Power                 : 15 W
      Spectral Range        : 430 - 3000 nm
      Field of View         : 40 km (both modes) from a 100-km orbit
      Imaging Modes         : Target : 600 pixel crosstrack
                                       70 m/pix spatial at 100-km orbit
                                       260 bands (10-nm width)
                                       ~12-deg latitudinal swaths
                            : Global : 300 pixel crosstrack
                                       140 m/pix spatial at 100-km orbit
                                       85 bands (20- & 40-nm width selected)
                                       ~145-deg latitudinal swaths
      Spectral Response     : FWHM < 12.5 nm (target mode in lab)
      Spatial Response      : FWHM < 1.0 mrad (target mode in lab)
      Spatial Sampling      : 0.7 mrad (target mode in lab)
      Signal-to-Noise Ratio : >400 at the equator (0-deg solar zenith)
                              >100 at polar regions (80-deg solar zenith)
 
    For more information about the M3 instrument, see Green, et al.
    (2008a) [GREENETAL2008A], Green, et al. (2008b) [GREENETAL2008B],
    Green, et al. (2009) [GREENETAL2009], and Petro, et al. (2008)
    [PETROETAL2008], and Pieters, et al. (2009a) [PIETERSETAL2009A].
 
 
  Scientific Objectives
  =====================
    The specific scientific objectives of the M3 instrument were to:
 
    - Evaluate the primary components of the lunar crust and their
      distribution across the highlands,
 
    - Characterize the diversity and extent of the different types of
      basaltic volcanism,
 
    - Identify and access deposits containing volatiles including water,
 
    - Map fresh craters to access the properties of impacts in the
      recent past, and
 
    - Identify and evaluate concentrations of unusual and unexpected
      minerals.

extracted metadata from PDS3 catalog and
                    modified to comply with PDS4 Information Model

Chandrayaan 1 Moon Mineralogy Mapper

Description

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