P Sreekumar
Articles written in Journal of Earth System Science
Volume 114 Issue 6 December 2005 pp 733-738
High energy X-γ ray spectrometer on the Chandrayaan-1 mission to the Moon
J N Goswami D Banerjee N Bhandari M Shanmugam Y B Acharya D V Subhedar M R Sharma C N Umapathy P Sreekumar M Sudhakar L Abraham P C Agrawal
The Chandrayaan-1 mission to the Moon scheduled for launch in late 2007 will include a high energy X-ray spectrometer (HEX) for detection of naturally occurring emissions from the lunar surface due to radioactive decay of the238U and232Th series nuclides in the energy region 20–250 keV. The primary science objective is to study the transport of volatiles on the lunar surface by detection of the 46.5 keV line from radioactive210Pb, a decay product of the gaseous222Rn, both of which are members of the238U decay series. Mapping of U and Th concentration over the lunar surface, particularly in the polar and U-Th rich regions will also be attempted through detection of prominent lines from the U and Th decay series in the above energy range. The low signal strengths of these emissions require a detector with high sensitivity and good energy resolution. Pixelated Cadmium-Zinc-Telluride (CZT) array detectors having these characteristics will be used in this experiment. Here we describe the science considerations that led to this experiment, anticipated flux and background (lunar continuum), the choice of detectors, the proposed payload configuration and plans for its realization
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