High resolution olivine abundance mapping in the Copernicus crater combining spectral data of Chandrayaan-1 M3 and Kaguya MI

We present a technique for improving the spatial resolution of satellite spectrophotometric data of the Moon’s surface using an artificial neural network. We demonstrate this approach using the high-spectral low-spatial resolution Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M 3 ) spectrophotometer and the low-spectral high-spatial resolution Multiband Imager (MI) Kaguya datasets for super-resolution olivine mapping over the Copernicus crater. The super-resolution of spectral maps is achieved by correlating spectral data of these instruments using a multilayer perceptron. An important advantage of the method is the use of a single data frame from each dataset to study a particular lunar region. The obtained maps of the olivine abundance provide new spatial context of the investigated mineral distribution: olivine-rich surface units become visible primarily as flow tubes, lava ponds on the crater walls and boulder outcrops associated with high olivine content (up to 90 vol.%) at the central peak of the investigated crater. The content of the olivine-reaches deposits of the area on the central peak reaches up to 35 vol. % of the lunar regolith. • A super-resolution technique is proposed for high – resolution olivine mapping • The content of lunar olivine varies from 0 to 35 vol. % for the Copernicus crater region • High-olivine spots are associated with surface areas covered with boulders • Shapes and morphology of smaller deposits on the northern slope are refined