vai838 / class-chandrayaan-2

CLASS-Chandrayaan-2

The Chandrayaan-2 Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer (CLASS) is an X-ray fluorescence (XRF) instrument designed for exploring lunar surface composition. It was sent to the Moon as a payload onboard the Chandrayaan-2 mission. CLASS observes in the soft X-ray energy range, covering an interval from ~0.4 to 20 keV. Like previous XRF experiments sent to the Moon, CLASS harnesses solar X-rays to excite elements in the lunar regolith, subsequently detecting the emitted XRF signals from these elements.

CLASS can identify major and trace elements that constitute lunar rocks, including O, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Ti, Cr, Mn, and Fe, which are detectable in its XRF spectrum. This instrument can achieve this with a ground footprint of 12.5 km × 12.5 km while operating from an orbit ~100 km above the lunar surface. The precursor to CLASS was the Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Spectrometer (C1XS).

This repository is a resource that provides the necessary documentation and computer code for working with data obtained from the CLASS instrument.