A mineralogical instrument for planetary applications
- Resource Type
- Report
- Authors
- Blake, David F; Vaniman, David T; Bish, David L
- Source
- Lunar and Planetary Inst., The Twenty-Fifth Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Part 1: A-G.
- Subject
- Lunar And Planetary Exploration
- Language
- English
The mineralogy of a planetary surface can be used to identify the provenance of soil or sediment and reveal the volcanic, metamorphic and/or sedimentological history of a particular region. We have discussed elsewhere the applications and the instrument design of possible X-ray diffraction and X-ray fluorescence (XRD/XRF) devices for the mineralogical characterization of planetary surfaces. In this abstract we evaluate some aspects of sample-detector geometry and sample collection strategies.