Surface composition- studying physical and chemical properties

One of the open questions in cosmochemistry is understanding the conditions under which our solar system formed and the processes happening during the first 10 Myrs of its formation. A direct way to answer this question is study grains found within primitive meteorites that represent the dust in the proto-solar nebula and also the phases that formed at different stages during the evolution of the proto-solar disk. We study the micro- to nanometer scale structure and chemical and isotope composition of these rare grains (i.e., pre-solar and refractory grains) using various high-end analytical instruments.

Hyperspectral data processing and calibration

Data processing and calibration defining the uncertainty is very important for the scientific analysis. We focus to understand our data and the limitations while analysing the results and interpreting them in terms of their physical and chemical properties. The pipeline Includes 4 or 5 major steps:

1. Radiometric and spectral calibration
2. Denoising and artefact minimisation
3. Thermal correction
4. photometric correction
5. Atmospheric correction (e.g., for Mars, Venus).

One of the most Challenging task is define the uncertainty in the data (quantifying the noise).