TEN YEARS EXPLORING THE MOON WITH THE LRO DIVINER LUNAR RADIOMETER EXPERIMENT (Invited Presentation)

The Diviner Lunar Radiometer instrument aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has been mapping the Moon on a continuous basis for the last ten years. The Diviner data have revealed the extreme nature of the Moon’s thermal environments, thermophysical properties, and surface composition. Diviner is the first multispectral thermal infrared instrument to globally map an airless body at high spatial and temporal resolution.

Some of Diviner’s key results include:

1. A complete global map of lunar diurnal and seasonal surface temperature variations at ~500 m spatial resolution
2. The first measurements of the thermal emission from cryogenic regions of permanent shadow at the lunar poles
3. A global map of the thermophysical properties of the uppermost centimeters of the lunar regolith
4. A global map of lunar rock abundance
5. A global map of the Moon’s bulk silicate mineralogy
6. An improved understanding of lunar impact chronology during the past ~1 billion years
7. An improved understanding of the thermal stability of cold-trapped volatiles at the lunar poles
8. An improved understanding of the angular thermal emission from the lunar surface and the effects of roughness

Diviner’s extensive dataset, which is the second largest in the field of planetary science, represents a cornerstone for thermal infrared studies of the Moon that can be applied to the study of other airless bodies.