Title:

What Reflectance Spectroscopy can Tell us about Planetary
Surfaces and their Evolution


Ed Cloutis
University of Winnipeg
Canada



Abstract:

Reflectance spectroscopy is a powerful technique for exploring the
surficial geology of planetary bodies. This technique is capable of
providing information on the following properties of solid surfaces:
the presence and nature of amorphous or poorly crystalline phases;
analysis of both organic and inorganic components; discriminating
structurally distinct but compositionally identical species; the
presence and structural state of water; cation site occupancies in
minerals; the identity of different anions and anionic groups; the
type and abundance of different transition series elements; and,
oxidation states of transition series elements. Such information, in
turn, enables us to constrain the geological and climatological
histories of target bodies. This is due to the fact that
spectroscopic analysis can provide insights into the conditions that
were present during formation of geological materials and their
subsequent modification (if any). Target properties that can be
derived from spectroscopic analysis