Friday, January 26, 2007

A UNM scientist is helping a Japanese mission in space

By John Fleck
Journal Staff Writer
    A little bit of Bob Reedy is headed into space this summer atop a Japanese rocket.
    Reedy, a University of New Mexico scientist who has been studying the moon since the Apollo missions of the 1960s, won't be making the trip himself.
    Reedy, the scientific godfather of a technique for mapping the chemical composition of a planet's crust, was named this month to the science team for the Japanese SELENE mission, due to launch this summer.
    The spacecraft will orbit the moon for at least a year, making the most detailed map ever made of Earth's nearest neighbor.
    For Reedy, who retired in 2002 from Los Alamos National Laboratory and has a faculty position at UNM's Institute of Meteoritics, the mission brings his career full circle.
    In 1969, fresh out of graduate school, he helped develop the "gamma ray spectrometers" that flew on three of the Apollo missions.
    The spectrometers are similar to cameras. But instead of looking at visible light, they detect emissions when high-energy cosmic particles slam into the moon's surface, providing clues to the chemicals the lunar dirt and rocks are made of.
    "It's basically a high energy bullet," Reedy said of the cosmic rays.
    The trick is in understanding what you're seeing, which is why the Japanese team wanted Reedy's help. Over the next few months, he will be working on the theoretical calculations needed to understand what the camera is telling them once it gets to the moon.
    Reedy has been involved in Mars missions, where the trip from launch to arrival takes more than a year. This mission, he said, offers more instant gratification.
    "The moon," he said, "you get there right away."