WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A new NASA sensor has taken to the skies to help geoscientists map rocks hosting lithium and other critical minerals on Earth's surface some 60,000 feet below.
Cradled in the nose of a high-altitude research airplane called AVIRIS-5, it is the latest in a long line of sensors pioneered by NASA JPL to survey Earth, the Moon, and other worlds.
In collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the flights are part of the largest airborne campaign of its kind in the country's history.
But that's just one of many tasks that are on the horizon for AVIRIS-5, short for Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer-5, which has a lot in common with sensors used to explore other planets.
About the size of a microwave oven, AVIRIS-5 detects the spectral 'fingerprints' of minerals and other compounds in reflected sunlight. Like its cousins flying in space, the sensor takes advantage of the fact that all kinds of molecules, from rare earth elements to flower pigments, have unique chemical structures that absorb and reflect different wavelengths of light.
The technology was pioneered at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California in the late 1970s. Over the decades, imaging spectrometers have visited every major rocky body in the solar system from Mercury to Pluto. They've traced Martian crust in full spectral detail, revealed lakes on Titan, and tracked mineral-rich dust across the Sahara and other deserts. One is en route to Europa, an ocean moon of Jupiter, to search for the chemical ingredients needed to support life.
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