Water on the Moon and chronology using lunar radar data

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society – 6:00PM, Wednesday, 18 February

Water on the Moon and chronology using lunar radar data

Meeting Location: MIT Lincoln Lab Cafeteria

As our closest celestial neighbor, the Moon remains on the cutting edge of scientific and technologic advances. Recent and ongoing spacecraft using orbital radar have afforded an unprecedented view of the lunar surface. Data from the Mini-SAR instrument on the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft and Mini-RF on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed new details about the extent and status of water ice resources in the Polar Regions. Lunar radar data of impact craters also provide a means to expand our chronology of lunar surface materials.

Bradley J. Thomson is a Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University. He received his B.S. degree from Harvey Mudd College as a geology major at Pomona College (both in Claremont, CA) in 1998, and received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in geological sciences from Brown University in Providence, RI in 2002 and 2006, respectively. His work focuses on the use of spacecraft observations and models to understand surface modification processes on terrestrial planets, and to better link orbital with surface observations. He has authored and co-authored more than 30 peer reviewed publications. Dr. Thomson has worked as a Senior Research Scientist at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory as a member of the science team for twin lunar orbital radar instruments: Mini-SAR and Mini-RF on the Chandrayaan-1 and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft, respectively. He helped develop an observational campaign for the Mini-RF instrument to take advantage of excess downlink capacity at the White Sands DSN station, resulting in a more than 100-fold increase in the volume of lunar data that Mini-RF was able to collect. He also participated in the search for deposits of water ice in permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles using Mini-SAR and Mini-RF data. Dr. Thomson has worked as a postdoc at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech, where he analyzed images of Mars using the HiRISE camera. He contributed to the site selection process for the Mars Science Laboratory rover, and was one of many proponents for a landing site in Gale crater. His prior work on Mars focused on understanding the potential role of water in shaping the surface geomorphology, and also re-examining the geology of the Viking landing sites. He is an avid space enthusiast who frequently gives public outreach talks in order to make science more accessible to a broader audience.

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