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While the Moon has been considerded to be a "dry" world without volatiles, the vesicularized rocks and glasses in Apollo samples indicate the presence of volatiles on/inside the ancient moon. Even at present, light element would be concentrated in the permanently shadowed areas around the poles as suggested by the neutron spectrometer onboard Lunar Prospector.
The Spectral Profiler (SP) is a visible-near infrared spectrometer onboard Japanese lunar orbiter "KAGUYA (SELENE)" which was launched on September 14, 2007. SP obtains continuous reflectance spectra with broad spectral coverage (500-2600 nm) and high spectral resolution (6-8 nm). With the polar orbit of Kaguya, SP provides us with the global coverage of the lunar surface in a lunar day. The accurate foot print location and geological context will be given by simultaneous imaging by Multiband Imager or Terrain Camera. After the completion of the initial checkout, SP started the nominal operation on December 21, 2007.
Appying the data processing flow based on the pre-launch and in-situ calibration data, we will search for the absorptions of phyllosilicates around 700 nm and of ices in the near-infrared. In this presentation, we report the preliminary results of this survey by SP.
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