M. Lemelin

• PhD Planetary Remote Sensing
• Professor (Assistant) at Université de Sherbrooke

The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission aims to study volatiles and local mineralogy in the lunar South Pole using instruments such as the Near Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System (NIRVSS). This study investigates the spectral properties of the VIPER mission area at high spatial resolution using data from the Kaguya Mu...

The Shackleton–de Gerlache Ridge (Connecting Ridge) in the lunar South Pole is a scientifically significant region, potentially harboring hematite and surficial water ice, as detected by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3). As a candidate landing site for NASA's Artemis 3 and the former landing site for the Intuitive Machines 2 (IM-2) mission, the CR p...

The Artemis exploration zone is a geologically complex region likely to host some of the oldest and as‐yet‐unstudied materials on the Moon. We review six potential Artemis landing sites (001, 004, 007, 011, 102, and 105) within candidate Artemis III landing regions ”Connecting Ridge,“ “Peak Near Shackleton,” “Leibnitz Beta Plateau,” “de Gerlache Ri...

The objective of this study is to contribute new knowledge on the geology and remote sensing of gossans in the Canadian Arctic as Martian analogues to assess their potential for detection by satellite images using a field-based spectral library of gossans. This study is part of the T-MARS (Terrestrial Mineral Analysis by Remote Sensing) project bas...

In this study, we focus on characterizing the spectroscopic properties of ilmenite, red hematite and pink mg-spinel in our laboratory in preparation for upcoming robotic missions. These minerals have been detected from lunar orbit and could be present in the polar regolith. We then evaluate the efficiency of the Hapke radiative transfer model in es...

The goals of this project are to analyze the proposed 13 Artemis III candidate landing sites for sampling primordial crust, South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin, and post-SPA materials and to identify potential geologic targets in the Artemis Exploration Zone. Abstract has been downloaded from: https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2024/pdf/1530.pdf

The Artemis exploration zone is a geologically-complex region likely hosting some of the oldest and as-yet-unstudied materials on the Moon. We review six potential Artemis landing sites (001, 004, 007, 011, 102, and 105) within candidate Artemis III landing regions ‘Connecting Ridge,’ ‘Peak Near Shackleton,’ ‘Leibnitz Beta Plateau,’ ‘de Gerlache Ri...

If past life ever existed on Mars, what are the multiple ways it could have been preserved in the Martian geological record? This crucial question is becoming especially relevant the more we uncover about the planet’s ancient wet history. Different acidic and sulfur rich analog environments have been proposed that are comparable to the alteration e...

Lunar Vertex is a suite of instruments and a rover that will explore the Reiner Gamma swirl and magnetic anomaly in Oceanus Procellarum. Selected through NASA's first Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon (PRISM) call, Lunar Vertex will be delivered on a Commercial Lunar Payloads Services (CLPS) lander. The lander will dep...

Le projet T-MARS (Terrestrial Mineral Analysis by Remote Sensing) vise à étudier les chapeaux de fer en tant qu’analogues à des formations géologiques potentiellement formées sur Mars. Ces chapeaux sont des dépôts de surface de plusieurs mètres de diamètre riches en fer oxydé, ce qui cause leur couleur ocre caractéristique et sont des cibles pour l...

Lunar Vertex is a suite of instruments and rover, that will be used to explore and characterize the Reiner Gamma swirl in Oceanus Procellarum (landing site at 7.585°N, 301.275°E). Selected through NASA’s first Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon (PRISM) call, Lunar Vertex will land on the Moon on a Commercial Lunar Paylo...

We aim to improve knowledge on the composition and spectral properties of Canadian Arctic gossans as analogues to their Martian counterpart to assess their detection potential using satellite imagery. This study is part of the T-MARS project (Terrestrial Mineral Analysis by Remote Sensing), based at Université de Sherbrooke, QC, Canada.

Gossans are rust-coloured surficial deposits that are generally a few dozen meters in size. They are the product of weathering of sulfide and oxide minerals in host rocks, and if large enough, can be detected using satellite imagery. This study focuses on gossans preserved in volcanic terrain in the High Arctic Large Igneous Province (HALIP) expose...

Gossans are rust-coloured surficial deposits that are the product of surface weathering of sulphide and oxide minerals in host rocks. Most gossans are small (a few tens of metres to less than 1 or 2 km in length) and they are usually demarcated by a single point on geological maps. Over the past decade, the Geological Survey of Canada carried out f...

Due to the challenging illumination conditions of the lunar polar regions, mineralogic maps have generally been constrained to within 0°–70°N/S. Here we generate a gridded reflectance data cube from the Kaguya Spectral Profiler measurements for each polar region and calibrate it to absolute reflectance using data from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altime...

Explosive volcanic eruptions are responsible for producing localized pyroclatic deposits found across the lunar surface. These small localized pyroclastic deposits are thought to have erupted through transient, vulcanian-like eruptions. We used several remote data products, including a water abundance map, to understand the compositional and physic...

Training a deep learning model requires highly variable data to permit reasonable generalization. If the variability in the data about to be processed is low, the interest in obtaining this generalization seems limited. Yet, it could prove interesting to specialize the model with respect to a particular theme. The use of enhanced super-resolution g...

We use data acquired by the Kaguya Spectral Profiler between November 2007 and June 2009 as an independent dataset to search for the presence of water ice in permanently shaded regions using the method of Li et al. (2018).

Impact cratering on the Moon and the derived size-frequency distribution functions of lunar impact craters are used to determine the ages of unsampled planetary surfaces across the Solar System. Radiometric dating of lunar samples provides an absolute age baseline, however , crater-chronology functions for the Moon remain poorly constrained for age...

The exploration of the lunar south polar region and the ground truthing of polar volatiles is one of the top priorities for several space agencies and private partners. Here we use Moon Mineralogy Mapper surficial water ice detections to investigate the location of water ice-bearing permanently shaded regions (PSRs) near the south pole. We extract...

We quantify the abundance of FeO, minerals (olivine, pyroxenes and plagioclase), nanophase iron and a new OMAT product at 1 km in the both polar regions all derived using data from the entire set of SP orbits (~8000) and Hapke radiative transfer modeling.

The ESRGAN is used to increase the resolution of HighRise Imagery.

Gossans are surficial deposits that form in host bedrock by the alteration of sulphides by acidic and oxidizing fluids. These deposits are typically a few meters to kilometers in size and they constitute important vectors to buried ore deposits. Hundreds of gossans have been mapped by field geologists in sparsely vegetated areas of the Canadian Arc...

The lunar floor‐fractured crater Gassendi and surrounding area were examined with high‐resolution Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imagery and other remote sensing data to characterize and understand the volcanic processes in the southwestern region of the Moon. This study was selected because the Gassendi region exhibits a variety of volcanic features...

Impact melts are ubiquitous across the Moon, occurring in settings ranging from massive basin deposits to flows and ponds in and around small craters. Recent high spatial resolution imaging and spectroscopy datasets for the Moon have enhabled the identification and study of impact melt units at increasingly small spatial scales, including on the ce...

The Wavelet Leaders Method (WLM) is a wavelet‐based multifractal formalism that allows the identification of scale breaks (thus scaling regimes), the definition of scaling properties (mono versus multi fractality of the surface), and the calculation of the Hölder exponent that characterizes each pixel, based on the comparison between a theoretical...

In this study, Hapke's radiative transfer model is used to verify the feasibility of retrieving the composition and grain-size of the ground in an open-pit mine, seen as a regolith. Such a tool could be useful for dust surveys and thus preventing potential environmental risks such as acid mine drainage. As the true compositional endmembers of the m...

Efforts have been made to identify meteorite source regions using Lunar Prospector Gamma-Ray Spectrometer (LPGRS) data and Clementine reflectance data, but the low spatial resolution (≥0.5 degree per pixel) of LPGRS measurements and relative instrumental insensitivity to Fe-poor lithologies means potential source regions can often only be identifie...

Lunar lobate scarps, or thrust faults, are widespread across the lunar surface. They are among the youngest landforms on the surface of the Moon; some are likely still active today. Several lines of evidence point to the relatively young age of the lunar scarps (i.e., their crisp and pristine morphology, cross-cutting relationships with small diame...

The Gassendi region, on the western nearside of the Moon just north of Mare Humorum, exhibits a variety of volcanic features. Recent studies of these features reveal the region’s complex volcanic history. For instance, discovery of new and confirmation of pre-existing cryptomare, pyroclastic deposits, mare deposits, lava lakes, irregular depression...

Lunar space weathering encompasses a number of space-surface interactions, including micrometeoroid, solar wind, and cosmic rays bombardment. The degree these processes affects the surface is dependent on its latitude. An important product of the space weathering process on the Moon is the formation of submicroscopic iron particles because their pr...

The innermost ring in impact basins exposes material originating from various depths, and can be used to study the composition of the lunar crust with depth. In this study, we conduct quantitative mineralogical analyses of the innermost ring in 13 lunar impact basins using reflectance data from the Kaguya Multiband Imager and radiative transfer mod...

We study LOLA derived normal albedo as a function of Diviner maximum temperature, to see if lunar permanently shadowed regions cold enough (<110K) to preserve surface water frost over geologic timescales show increased reflectance.

Various approaches exist to study the roughness of planetary bodies. Wavelet-based analyses have the advantage of characterizing the surface roughness both spatially and in frequency, but have been rarely used in a planetary science context so far. In this study, we use and refine the Wavelet Leaders Method to study the roughness of the Moon both s...

Numerical modeling of the peak-ring basin formation showed that the peak-ring forms from the material that is part of the central uplift outwardly thrust over the inwardly collapsing transient crater rim. Simulations of the lunar basin formation showed that the peak or inner ring in peak ring or multiring basins, respectively, is composed of the ov...

We find that the reflectance of the lunar surface within 5° of latitude of the South Pole increases rapidly with decreasing temperature, near ∼110 K, behavior consistent with the presence of surface water ice. The North polar region does not show this behavior, nor do South polar surfaces at latitudes more than 5° from the pole. This South pole ref...

Central peak craters are a particularly useful tool to study crustal composition because their depth of origin is relatively well constrained to 1/10th the crater diameter, they are formed from unmelted crustal rock, and their steep slopes should retard impact melt pooling and regolith accumulation from later lateral impact mixing. Because of thes...

In this work we refine the distribution of lunar troctolite. By formal definition troctolite can contain up to 50% pyroxene relative to total mafics and the presence of such relatively high abundances of pyroxene will foil spectral matching algorithms seeking olivine- dominated exposures using a pure olivine target signature. Radiative transfer mod...

The south pole of the Moon is an area of great interest for exploration and scientific research because many low-lying regions are permanently shaded and are likely to trap volatiles for extended periods of time, while adjacent topographic highs can experience extended periods of sunlight. One of the goals of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)...

In this study, we take a novel approach to derive the first mineral and FeO maps of the lunar polar regions (50-90° in latitude) at 1 km per pixel. We take advantage of the newly available calibrated reflectance data from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) and use it along with reflectance ratio from the Kaguya Spectral Profiler (SP) to deriv...

Multispectral infrared measurements by the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment on the Lunar Renaissance Orbiter enable the characterization of the position of the Christiansen Feature, a thermal infrared spectral feature that laboratory work has shown is proportional to the bulk silica content of lunar surface materials. Diviner measurements show t...

In June 2009 the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft was launched to the Moon. The payload consists of 7 science instruments selected to characterize sites for future robotic and human missions. Among them, the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) was designed to obtain altimetry, surface roughness, and reflectance measurements. The prima...

Lunar localized pyroclastic deposits are low albedo deposits with areas <2500km². These deposits were difficult to study before the turn of the millennium because of the lack of available high spatial-resolution data. With the launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Kaguya, and Chaandrayan-1, new sets of diverse high spatial-resolution data are...

The mineralogical composition of the lunar crust across the entire surface and at a wide range of depths can be inferred from remote sensing observations of complex craters and impact basins on the Moon. Here we better constrain the composition of the lunar crust with depth by (1) conducting a comprehensive study of the mineralogy of the basin’s in...

In this study we provide new global maps of olivine, low-calcium pyroxene, high-calcium pyroxene, plagioclase, FeO and OMAT using data from the Kaguya Multiband Imager. The Kaguya Multiband Imager acquired data in nine visible (415, 750, 900, 950, 1001 nm) and near-infrared (1000, 1050, 1250, and 1550 nm) spectral bands very similar to those acquir...

The identification of surface ice at Mercury's poles relied largely on correlating anomalously bright surface material identified with surface reflectance measurements from the Mercury Laser Altimeter with model temperatures that allow surface ice to be stable for billions of years. A similar data set exists for the lunar poles. The Lunar Orbiter L...

The Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) experiment on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is a laser altimeter that also measures the strength of the return pulse from the lunar surface. These data have been used to estimate the reflectance of the lunar surface, including regions lacking direct solar illumination. A new calibration of these data is...

The upper 25-100. nm of the lunar regolith within the permanently shaded regions (PSRs) of the Moon has been demonstrated to have significantly higher surface porosity than the average lunar regolith by observations that the Lyman-α albedo measured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) is lower in the PSRs tha...

Ryder and Wood (1977) suggested that the lunar crust becomes more mafic with depth because the impact melts associated with the large Imbrium and Serenitatis basins are more mafic than the surface composition of the Moon. In this study, we re-examine the hypothesis that the crust becomes more mafic with depth; we analyze the composition of crater c...

The possibility of lunar polar ice was suggested by Harold Urey in the 1950's [1], and has likely been directly detected at the North Pole of Mercury by MESSENGER. That detection was based on the presence of reflectance anomalies seen by the Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) that occurred only where models of the surface temperature allow long-duration...

There are more than fifty localized pyroclastic deposits on the lunar surface [1]. Localized pyroclastic deposits are small deposits (<2500 km2) that exhibit a low albedo and a smooth surface [2]. These deposits exist within floor-fractured craters and the margins of major mare regions. Furthermore, these deposits commonly occur in isolation instea...

Our understanding of the Moon has advanced greatly over the last several decades thanks to analyses of Apollo samples and lunar meteorites, and recent lunar orbital missions. Notably, it is now thought that the lunar poles may be much more enriched in H2O and other volatile chemical species than the equatorial regions sampled during the Apollo miss...

We constrain the amount of mantle in the crust and the depth-diameter ratio of the largest basins using mineral mixing models and a small crater spectral survey.

We present new mineral maps of Moscoviense Basin. The mineralogical diversity present makes MB a compelling target for future exploration and sample return.

Mineral maps derived from the Kaguya Multiband Imager of lunar crater central peaks are augmented using Diviner CF maps to better represent plg/pyx/olv abundances.

Central peak compositions derived from Kaguya MI data show only weak correlation of plagioclase with proximity to the mantle derived from GRAIL data.

[1] We model lunar ilmenite abundances over Mare Australe and Mare Ingenii regions using a new approach; we integrate Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Wide Angle Camera (WAC) and Clementine UVVIS/NIR data to obtain a 14 band mosaic (320-2,000 nm) and model it using Hapke's radiative transfer modeling techniques. We calculate a “maximum stoichiometrical...

We evaluated locations optimally suited for exploration of lunar polar volatiles using spatial analyst in ArcGIS. We propose four regions at each pole for lunar polar volatile examination.

A mission concept for volatile exploration in the intercrater polar highlands near the lunar north pole.

New sections measured at Meteor Crater indicate the extension of the ejecta blanket was partly accommodated by a series of normal faults. Those normal faults also provided a means of "burying" and protecting fallback ejecta.

The in situ study of lunar polar volatiles is a high National Research Council priority. Amundsen crater is a prime south-polar location for a landed mission to study volatiles.

Ilmenite (FeTi03) is considered a key mineral on the Moon, because the oxygen it contains can be extracted and could be used as life support for human settlement on the Moon and as a propellant. No ilmenite map exists to date because ultraviolet (UV) and/or hyperspectral data necessary for its identification were not available until recently. In th...