X-ray studies of planetary surfaces

Introduction:

Our solar system is believed to be nearly 4.6 billion years old. Soon after the formation of
the Sun, the residual gas and dust that surrounded the early Sun, slowly cooled and
gravitationally settled to form other large bodies in the solar system. These include the
current eight planets with their satellites, minor planets, asteroids and comets. As the
material in the solar system cooled, metal-rich rocky bodies formed in the inner solar
system (as they have high melting points) while the outer solar system produced gas-rich,
metal-poor giant planets.

Exploration of the solar system initiated by the early Pioneer and Voyager series of
spacecrafts began as flybys, maturing to orbiting missions such as the Luna, Apollo, ,
Viking, Venera, Galileo, Magellan, Clementine, Cassini, SMART-1, etc. They provided
initial global data on solar system bodies. These steps were most critical to sustain the
effort to understand the origin, composition and evolution of solar system bodies. Remote
sensing of planetary bodies were carried out using sensors across the full electromagnetic
spectrum as well as particle detectors (charged and neutral) and electric and magnetic
field sensors for detailed studies of plasma in the interplanetary medium. These have
immensely increased our understanding of these bodies and at the same time generated
new questions. Here we shall concentrate on the specific role of X-ray observations to
study planetary chemistry.

How do we know the chemistry from X-rays?

A few decades after the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Rontgen, it was shown by
Moseley in 1913 that when pure substances are irradiated with a beam of X-rays from an
X-ray tube, they produce new X-ray photons with an energy, characteristic of the
substance. With the nearly simultaneous developments in the quantum theory of the
atom, it became clear that these characteristic X-ray lines arise as follows. When an X-
ray photon hits an atom, it may either be absorbed or scattered by it. If the energy of the
incident photon is greater than the binding energy of an atomic shell, an electron will be
ejected (called photoelectron). This process is called photoelectric effect and the energy
of the photoelectron will be equal to the difference between the incident photon energy
and the binding energy of the respective shell. The vacancy is then filled by an electron in
a higher shell. This electron transition results in the emission of an X-ray photon (X-ray
fluorescence - XRF) of energy characteristic to the atom. This X-ray photon will have an
energy equal to the difference in energy between the two shells. Since the atomic energy
levels of each element in the periodic table are distinct, the fluorescent X-ray emission
from atoms can be used to directly identify the presence of the element. This forms the
basis for remotely sensing the chemistry of planetary surfaces.
 No: of X-
rays

Energy of XRF photons

(a)
1
(b) .
Figure 1: (a) decay of excited atom results in emission of fluorescent X-ray photon of a specific energy
characteristic to the atom. (b) XRF spectrum from a stainless steel plate showing lines from the major
How do elements present in stainless steel.
planetary
surfaces emit X-rays?

In laboratories, X-ray generators or radioactive

isotopes are used to illuminate the sample under
study. But these are too weak to excite enough XRF
photons (that can be detected by an X-ray detector)
from the planetary surface if carried onboard an
orbiting spacecraft.

On the other hand, the Sun can be the source of X-

rays. The surface temperature of the Sun is ~ 6000
K, which implies that the resulting blackbody emission is most
intense at visible wavelengths. The Sun also emits Figure 2: Time
X-rays. The profile
changesof in
X-ray
solaremission
magneticfrom the Sun as
observed by the SOXS experiment on
configurations give rise to sporadic release of energy. Often this results in acceleration of GSAT-2. Note the
extreme sudden onset of the flare
particles. Accelerated electrons that strike cool gas atoms on the solar surface, radiatescompared to the slow
decay and how the X-ray intensity varies at the two different
energy in the form of X-rays. This is referred to energy
as a solar flare where the X-ray emission
bands.
suddenly increases, reaches a maximum and decays over a time scale of minutes to hours
(Fig. 2). Flares are often classified according to increasing intensity as belonging to A, B,
C, M or X class (see table 1 for details), each class being ten times more intense than the
previous.
Table 1: GOES classification of solar flares

1
λ(angstroms) = hc/E=12.398/E (keV)
 Class Flux (W/m2) .
\ (1.5-12.5 keV)
A < 10-7
B 10-7 to 10-6
C 10-6 to 10-5
M 10-5 to 10-4
X > 10-4

When the solar X-rays strike the atoms on the surface of the planetary body, as described
in the previous section, XRF photons are emitted from the upper few microns. 2 An X-ray
detector on the orbiting spacecraft can then detect them and measure its energy to
generate a spectrum.

How do we determine elemental abundance from X-ray spectra?

Each element emits XRF photons at a unique energy and thus provides an unmistakable
identification of the same. The technique is thus very efficient in identifying the elements
present in the sample. Determining the composition also means that we need to know the
proportion in which each element is present in the sample. The conversion of the number
of X-ray photons of a given energy (X-ray line flux) into elemental abundances is not a
straightforward process. This is because, in addition to the true elemental abundances, the
observed X-ray line flux from a planetary body also depends on :

• the incident solar spectrum S(E) 3: The solar X-ray emission is highly variable
over periods as short as a few seconds. Hence it is important to continuously
measure the solar spectrum.
• inter-element effects M(a function of S and E): The observed X-ray fluorescent
line intensity from a sample depends on the mass fraction of other elements in the
sample.
• particle size : In regions where the mean particle size making up the target is
larger than the penetration depth of X-rays (which is the case of lunar regolith),
particle size affects the X-ray fluorescence line intensity. Laboratory experiments
have shown that the X-ray fluorescence line intensity for a given element
decreases with increasing particle size.
• incidence angle (θ): The angle subtended by solar X-rays with the planetary
body’s surface.
• phase angle (φ) : The angle between the source (Sun), planetary body and the
detector.

Clearly, the observed line strength (IObs) of an element is not a direct measure of the true
abundance. However, one can define a relationship between IObs(i) and a corrected line
intensity I0(i) (which can be directly related to the true abundance of element i) as

2
For example in the case of Moon, the upper 2 microns of regolith is sampled when we map Mg, Al and Si
abundance
3
S represents the distribution of photon energies (E) coming from the Sun
 I Obs(i) = f (S(E),i) {I0(i) * M(S(E), E) * P(E, θ ,φ,i)}

where f (S(E),i) represents a function of the incident solar spectrum S(E) for element i .
P (E, θ, φ,i) includes cumulative effects of mean particle size and ‘ * ’ represents
convolution.

XRF experiments in space

ISRO has over the course of many years established one of the most successful and
comprehensive remote sensing programs in the world for resource mapping of Earth.
Though these efforts have involved observations at microwave, infra-red and visible
bands, X-ray observations have not been deployed for Earth observations because
atmosphere absorbs X-rays. However, it is possible to derive the surface chemistry of
solid/rocky solar system objects with no atmosphere through X-ray remote sensing
techniques. Moon and Mercury form ideal examples to carry out such studies. There have
also been XRF experiments on the Mars rovers and Venus landers which did in-situ
measurements. It is to be noted that solar X-rays do not provide adequate flux at distances
beyond the orbit of Mars and hence orbital elemental mapping using X-rays cannot be
performed on outer solar system bodies

Though the first such experiment was flown on Luna 10 in 1966, Apollo-15 and 16 X-
ray fluorescence experiments were the first to clearly demonstrate the usefulness of this
technique. They mapped the abundance of Mg and Al relative to Si for about 10% of the
lunar surface at the equator.

Figure 4: History of XRF experiments for solar system bodies

The Chandrayaan-1 XRF experiment

The Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Spectrometer (C1XS) is

an XRF experiment designed to carry out mapping M
oon M
of the major rock forming elements such as Mg, Al,
Si, Ca, Ti and Fe on the lunar surface. The
complementary experiment alongside C1XS, the X-
ray solar monitor (XSM), provides continuous
observation of the solar X-rays. C1XS was
developed as a collaborative experiment involving Figure 5: C1XS flight instrument

Lu
na10
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, ISRO Satellite Centre and the European Space Agency.
The X-ray Solar Monitor was provided by University of Helsinki in Finland.

C1XS is currently performing well in lunar obit X-ray fluorescence lines from Mg, Al
and Si have been measured from the lunar surface even during the four relatively weak
solar flares that occurred in the past few months.

MA
gl S
i

Figure 6: C1XS XRF spectrum during a B-flare on 10 Feb 2009 (Dotted line is the nominal
detector background)

What does elemental abundance tell us?

Elements are the building blocks of the variety of minerals that compose a planetary body
and hence elemental abundance provides important clues to understand its origin and
thermal history. To give an example, as the body originates and evolves, a cation which
goes into the crystal structure of a mineral depends on the environment in which the
mineral crystallize. Moon is believed to have supported an initial partially melted phase
from the accretional heating arising from the liberation of gravitational potential energy
during its early evolution. Soon after formation, it gradually cooled and differentiated
over time. The upper layer of this magma which formed the Moon’s crust, is mainly
composed of a mineral called plagioclase feldspar (which is found in the bright areas seen
with the naked eye). As the magma cooled and this mineral crystallized, the early
formations seem to have accepted Mg into its crystalline structure while the later ones
contain more Fe. Thus, greater the proportion of Mg, more primitive is the rock. Hence
Mg/Fe ratio is a much sought after parameter which can be derived only from elemental
mapping.
Prior to Apollo, we knew little about the unusual properties of lunar regolith, the absolute
lack of hydrous minerals, lack of volatile elements, the tenuous lunar atmosphere and
many other aspects which are unique to an environment like that on the Moon. The most
accepted theory of Moon’s origin and the magma ocean hypothesis which tries to explain
the apparent dichotomy on the lunar surface is a direct result of mapping the lunar surface
chemistry.
The strength of the XRF technique mainly lies in the fact that the elemental signatures are
absolutely unmistakable unlike mineral identification using absorption spectra at infra-
red wavelengths where blending of absorption signatures of individual minerals lead to
non-unique interpretation of data. Mineral maps from IR observations combined with X-
ray elemental maps, form a powerful technique to derive a more quantitative mineral
compositional map of atmosphere-less planetary bodies.

Shyama Narendranath. K.C, S. Athiray and P.Sreekumar

Space Astronomy & Instrumentation Division, ISAC