Correlation analysis and partial least square modeling to quantify typical minerals with Chang'E-3 visible and near-infrared imaging spectrometer's ground validation data

In 2013, Chang'E-3 program will develop lunar mineral resources in-situ detection. A Visible and Near-infrared Imaging Spectrometer (VNIS) has been selected as one payload of CE-3 lunar rover to achieve this goal. It is critical and urgent to evaluate VNIS' spectrum data quality and validate quantification methods for mineral composition before its launch. Ground validation experiment of VNIS was carried out to complete the two goals, by simulating CE-3 lunar rover's detection environment on lunar surface in the laboratory. Based on the hyperspectral reflectance data derived, Correlation Analysis and Partial Least Square (CA-PLS) algorithm is applied to predict abundance of four lunar typical minerals (pyroxene, plagioclase, ilmenite and olivine) in their mixture. We firstly selected a set of VNIS' spectral parameters which highly correlated with minerals' abundance by correlation analysis (CA), and then stepwise regression method was used to find out spectral parameters which make the largest contributions to the mineral contents. At last, functions were derived to link minerals' abundance and spectral parameters by partial least square (PLS) algorithm. Not considering the effect of maturity, agglutinate and Fe0, we found that there are wonderful correlations between these four minerals and VNIS' spectral parameters, e.g. the abundance of pyroxene correlates positively with the mixture's absorption depth, the value of absorption depth added as the increasing of pyroxene's abundance. But the abundance of plagioclase correlates negatively with the spectral parameters of band ratio, the value of band ratio would decrease when the abundance of plagioclase increased. Similar to plagioclase, the abundance of ilmenite and olivine has a negative correlation with the mixture's reflectance data, if the abundance of ilmenite or olivine increase, the reflectance values of the mixture will decrease. Through model validation, better estimates of pyroxene, plagioclase and ilmenite's abundances are given. It is concluded that VNIS has the capability to be applied on lunar minerals' identification, and CA-PLS algorithm has the potential to be used on lunar surface's in-situ detection for minerals' abundance prediction. © 2014 Science Press, Institute of Geochemistry, CAS and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.