Laboratory Spectral Mixtures for Vera Rubin Ridge Mineralogy Research

Laboratory spectral reflectance values for mixtures of hematite, plagioclase, clinopyroxene, and nontronite created at Arizona State University. The dataset supports research on the spectral and compositional properties of the Murray Formation and Vera Rubin Ridge in Gale Crater, Mars. Samantha Jacob authored the dataset, which is associated with a 2020 paper submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

Use Cases

• Modeling spectral mixing relationships based on known mineral abundances.
• Calibrating or validating orbital or rover-based spectral observations of Mars.
• Investigating how specific mineral features change with varying mixture proportions.

Strengths

• Includes full spectral reflectance data from a spectrometer for all laboratory mixtures.
• Provides an Excel file documenting the precise abundance of each mineral in every mixture.
• Links Mastcam and ChemCam rover observations used in the associated research paper.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Arizona State University

Collection Method

Laboratory mixtures created and analyzed with a spectrometer.

Geography

Gale Crater, Mars (simulated via laboratory mixtures)