Rizos, J. L.; de León, J.; Licandro, J.; Campins, H.; Popescu, M.; Pinilla-Alonso, Noemí; Golish, Dathon; de Prá, Mario; Lauretta, Dante
Bibliographical reference
Icarus, Volume 328, p. 69-81.
Advertised on:
8
2019
Journal
Citations
4
Refereed citations
3
Description
The OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample-return mission is investigating primitive
near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu. Thousands of images will be acquired
by the MapCam instrument onboard the spacecraft, an imager with four
color filters based on the Eight-Color Asteroid Survey (ECAS): b‧
(473 nm), v (550 nm), w (698 nm), and x (847 nm). This set of filters
will allow identification and characterization of the absorption band
centered at 700 nm and associated with hydrated silicates. In this work,
we present and validate a spectral clustering methodology for
application to the upcoming MapCam images of the surface of Bennu. Our
procedure starts with the projection, calibration, and photometric
correction of the images. In a second step, we apply a K-means algorithm
and we use the Elbow criterion to identify natural clusters. This
methodology allows us to find distinct areas with spectral similarities,
which are characterized by parameters such as the spectral slope
S‧ and the center and depth of the 700-nm absorption band, if
present. We validate this methodology using images of (1) Ceres from
NASA's Dawn mission. In particular, we analyze the Occator crater and
Ahuna Mons. We identify one spectral cluster-located in the outer parts
of the Occator crater interior-showing the 700-nm hydration band
centered at 698 ± 7 nm and with a depth of 3.4 ± 1.0%. We
interpret this finding in the context of the crater's near-surface
geology.
Related projects
Minor Bodies of the Solar System
This project studies the physical and compositional properties of the so-called minor bodies of the Solar System, that includes asteroids, icy objects, and comets. Of special interest are the trans-neptunian objects (TNOs), including those considered the most distant objects detected so far (Extreme-TNOs or ETNOs); the comets and the comet-asteroid
Julia de
León Cruz