NASA might be planning to bring humans back to the moon soon, but a newly developed telescope concept should be able to tell us the chemical makeup of the moon’s surface as we sit here on Earth.
According to a press release from Tokyo Metropolitan University shred by the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s EurekAlert, researchers at the school have found that a newly developed, compact X-ray telescope could be used to map the chemical composition of the entire moon surface from a perch on a satellite. It said this is a “vital breakthrough for understanding its geological evolution.”
Their research on the subject was recently published in the Earth, Planets and Space journal.
“Detailed modeling of the detector and a realistic satellite mission show that two years would be enough to map five key elements, while an array of five-by-five detectors could improve resolution and get results faster,” said the press release of the telescope’s capabilities.
Even if astronauts and robots are able to collect samples from the moon for researchers to study on Earth, the TMU team noted that samples can not be collected from everywhere on the lunar surface. It’s one of the reasons why the complete geochemistry of the moon – a rocky natural satellite that orbits our planet.
“Scientists use a technology known as X-ray fluorescence imaging, where detectors directed at the Moon are used to pick up X-rays released by specific elements when they are hit by solar rays,” to learn more about it without getting into a spaceship. Observations from the the Apollo and Chandrayaan missions have also helped make partial lunar maps.
Still, there is still not a comprehensive map of the object we can see nearly every night in the sky. There are several challenges that researchers face when trying to collect data, from lack of sufficient illumination from solar rays to technical issues.
“To overcome these challenges, a team led by Airi Toida and Prof. Yuichiro Ezoe at Tokyo Metropolitan University proposes the use of a compact X-ray telescope which could be mounted on a satellite mission around the Moon,” the press release explained. “A telescope would enable wide area observation of the lunar surface during powerful solar flares. While conventional X-ray telescopes are prohibitively heavy and large, the team’s newly designed compact unit, intended for observations of the Earth’s magnetosphere, weighs in at less than ten kilograms and might be easily deployed as part of long-term satellite observation.”
So far, the detector has been tested under “significantly more severe radiation environments than lunar orbit, realizing robust, wide-area, high resolution imaging of the lunar surface over extended mission durations,” the press release added.
Once they developed the telescope specifications, they incorporated them into a numerical simulation to determine if a mission to map the lunar surface would be a success. They believe they can map the moon for five elements (oxygen, iron, magnesium, aluminum, silicon) in a little over two years with a grid size of 70 x 70 kilometers.
That means the telescope unit “is so compact that it is feasible to have a five-by-five array of them on a single satellite,” the press release said. “The team’s simulations also revealed that this 25-telescope system might reduce the mission time down to a year, with a map of sodium as well with two years, both with a grid size of 30 x 30 kilometers,” it added.
If this project moved forward, it could bring forth the first “complete map of elemental abundance over the whole surface of the moon,” something researchers described as “a revolutionary step forward for understanding lunar geology.”
NASA is also currently working on missions to explore the moon, and to eventually bring humans back to the lunar surface,” with its ongoing Artemis missions.
