NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey have been mapping the planets since Apollo. One group is looking nearer to dwelling for minerals vital to nationwide safety and the economic system.
If not for the Joshua bushes, the tan hills of Cuprite, Nevada, would resemble Mars. Scalded and chemically altered by water from deep underground, the rocks listed here are earthly analogs for understanding historical Martian geology. The hills are additionally wealthy with minerals. They’ve lured prospectors for greater than 100 years and made Cuprite a super place to check NASA know-how designed to map the minerals, craters, crusts, and ices of our photo voltaic system.
Sensors that discovered lunar water, charted Saturn’s moons, even investigated floor zero in New York Metropolis have been all examined and calibrated at Cuprite, mentioned Robert Inexperienced, a senior analysis scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. He’s honed devices in Nevada for many years.
One among Inexperienced’s virtual currency initiatives is to seek out and map rocky surfaces within the American West that might comprise minerals essential to the nation’s economic system and safety. At present, the U.S. relies on imports of fifty vital minerals, which embrace lithium and rare earth elements utilized in all the things from rechargeable batteries to drugs.
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) are searching nationwide for home sources. NASA is contributing to this effort with high-altitude plane and sensors able to detecting the molecular fingerprints of minerals throughout huge, treeless expanses in wavelengths of sunshine not seen to human eyes.
The collaboration is known as GEMx, the Geological Earth Mapping Experiment, and it’s probably the most important airborne spectroscopic survey in U.S. historical past. Since 2023, scientists engaged on GEMx have charted greater than 190,000 sq. miles (500,000 sq. kilometers) of North American soil.
As NASA devices fly in plane 60,000 ft (18,000 meters) overhead, Todd Hoefen, a geophysicist, and his colleagues from USGS work under. The samples of rock they take a look at and acquire within the discipline are essential to making sure that the airborne observations match actuality on the bottom and will not be skewed by the intervening environment.
The GEMx mission marks the virtual currency in an extended historical past of partnerships between NASA and USGS. The 2 businesses have labored collectively to map rocky worlds — and maintain astronauts and rovers secure — because the early days of the house race.
For instance, geologic maps of the Moon made within the early Sixties on the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona, helped Apollo mission planners choose secure and scientifically promising websites for the six crewed landings that occurred from 1969 to 1972. Earlier than stepping onto the lunar floor, NASA’s Moon-bound astronauts traveled to Flagstaff to follow fieldwork with USGS geologists. A model of these Apollo boot camps continues as we speak with astronauts and scientists concerned in NASA’s Artemis mission.
To detect minerals and different compounds on the surfaces of rocky our bodies throughout the photo voltaic system, together with Earth, scientists use a know-how pioneered by JPL within the Eighties referred to as imaging spectroscopy. One of many unique imaging spectrometers constructed by Robert Inexperienced and his group is central to the GEMx marketing campaign within the Western U.S.
Concerning the dimension and weight of a minifridge and constructed to fly on planes, the instrument is known as AVIRIS-Basic, quick for Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer. Like all imaging spectrometers, it takes benefit of the truth that each molecule displays and absorbs gentle in a novel sample, like a fingerprint. Spectrometers detect these molecular fingerprints within the gentle bouncing off or emitted from a pattern or a floor.
Within the case of GEMx, that’s daylight shimmering off totally different sorts of rocks.
In comparison with an ordinary digital digital camera, which “sees” three colour channels (pink, inexperienced, and blue), imaging spectrometers can see greater than 200 channels, together with infrared wavelengths of sunshine which might be invisible to the human eye.
NASA spectrometers have orbited or flown by each main rocky physique in our photo voltaic system. They’ve helped scientists examine methane lakes on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, and examine Pluto’s skinny environment. One JPL-built spectrometer is at the moment en route to Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter, to assist seek for chemical elements essential to assist life.
“One of many cool issues about NASA is that we develop know-how to look out on the photo voltaic system and past, however we additionally flip round and look again down,” mentioned Ben Phillips, a longtime NASA program supervisor who led GEMx till he retired in 2025.
Greater than 200 hours of GEMx flights are scheduled by way of fall 2025. Scientists will course of and validate the info, with the primary USGS mineral maps to comply with. Throughout these flights, an ER-2 research aircraft from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Analysis Heart in Edwards, California, will cruise over the Western U.S. at altitudes twice as excessive as a passenger jet flies.
At such excessive altitudes, pilot Dean Neeley should put on a spacesuit much like these utilized by astronauts. He flies solo within the cramped cockpit however will probably be accompanied by state-of-the-art NASA devices. Within the stomach of the airplane rides AVIRIS-Basic, which will probably be retiring quickly after greater than three many years in service. Rigorously packed within the airplane’s nostril is its successor: AVIRIS-5, withdrawing for the primary time in 2025.
Collectively, the 2 devices present 10 occasions the efficiency of the older spectrometer alone, however even by itself AVIRIS-5 marks a leap ahead. It might pattern areas starting from about 30 ft (10 meters) to lower than a foot (30 centimeters).
“The most recent technology of AVIRIS will greater than stay as much as the unique,” Inexperienced mentioned.
The GEMx analysis challenge will final 4 years and is funded by the USGS Earth Mapping Sources Initiative. The initiative will capitalize on each the know-how developed by NASA for spectroscopic imaging, in addition to the company’s experience in analyzing the datasets and extracting vital mineral info from them.
Knowledge collected by GEMx is out there here.
Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 818-354-0307
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Elizabeth Vlock
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov
Written by Sally Youthful
2025-086