Description
The detection of possible widespread surficial H2O/OH on sunlight and shadowed regions of the lunar surface was one of the most unexpected discoveries of the 2000’s. Remote sensing measurements of the H2O/OH absorption 3 µm feature from data sets from e.g. the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) on the Chandrayan-1 spacecraft in 2009 gave an indication of possible spatial and time of variations in surficial water concentration. The identification of water and determining its abundance at scales <75 m will provide critical new knowledge on a possible “lunar water cycle” and support future human and robotic exploration. With advancements in technology, improved lunar infrastructure (including services such as ESA’s Moonlight) and increased accessibility enabled by lower cost rideshares now allow for a fast (e.g. <4 year), focused mission to answer this question is now possible.
The LIRIS small satellite concept builds on experience from the Lunar Pathfinder development at SSTL towards designing a variant of the Carb+ platform series tailored for the lunar environment. Building on heritage from the DarkCarb imager flown in 2023, the multispectral imager will be capable of providing sub-meter resolution images of the lunar surface in spectral bands around 3 microns. The spacecraft will host a thermal infrared imager, capable of imaging in the 6-25 microns range, which is an evolution of the University of Oxford’s Lunar Thermal Mapper to provide thermal context for environment and surface composition characterisation.
This presentation will describe the details of the concept and science case, as well as the current status.
