A new NASA sensor is taking to the skies to hunt for essential minerals, and its capabilities are as impressive as the mission itself. Known as AVIRIS-5 (Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer-5), this latest instrument in NASA JPL’s long lineage of surface-scanning spectrometers is designed to map rocks that host lithium and other critical minerals on Earth’s surface from approximately 60,000 feet up. In partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), these flights form the largest airborne minerals-mensing campaign of its kind in U.S. history.
But AVIRIS-5 has broader ambitions beyond this initial goal. The instrument, roughly the size of a microwave oven, detects the spectral fingerprints of minerals and various compounds by analyzing reflected sunlight. Just like spaceborne sensors, AVIRIS-5 relies on the principle that molecules—from rare earth elements to plant pigments—absorb and reflect light at specific wavelengths based on their unique chemical structures.
NASA’s imaging spectroscopy technology traces back to the late 1970s at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Over the years, these instruments have explored virtually every major rocky body in the solar system—from Mercury to Pluto. They’ve detailed Martian crusts, revealed Titan’s lakes, and tracked mineral-rich dust across deserts on Earth. A dedicated instrument is even en route to Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon, to search for chemical ingredients that could support life.
Another famous example, NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper, helped identify water on the Moon in 2009. That discovery continues to inform research tied to NASA’s Artemis goals, as noted by Robert Green, a senior JPL scientist who has contributed to numerous spectroscopy missions across the solar system.
Common hardware under imaging spectrometers includes mirrors, detector arrays, and electron-beam gratings. These components split reflected light into its constituent colors, similar to how a prism disperses light. Much of the cutting-edge performance in today’s spectrometers owes to advances from NASA JPL’s Microdevices Laboratory, where breakthroughs in physics, chemistry, and materials science converge with classical optics.
In the lab, materials like black silicon—the darkest substance ever manufactured—play a role. Its nano-scale needle-like structures trap stray light, preventing it from muddying measurements and thereby boosting sensitivity.
The evolution of AVIRIS technology is storied. Since the first AVIRIS flew in 1986, four generations have been deployed to study volcanoes, monitor crop health, identify polluted debris after disasters, and track wildfires among many other uses. The newest model, AVIRIS-5, offers spatial resolution that is twice as fine as its predecessor, capable of distinguishing areas from less than a foot (about 30 centimeters) up to roughly 30 feet (around 10 meters) across.
This year alone, AVIRIS-5 has logged over 200 hours of high-altitude flight time in the Western United States, including Nevada and California, under a project named GEMx (Geological Earth Mapping Experiment). The missions use NASA’s ER-2 aircraft from the Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, forming the airborne component of the USGS-led Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI) to modernize mapping of surface and subsurface resources.
Since 2023, the NASA‑USGS collaboration has collected data across more than 366,000 square miles (about 950,000 square kilometers) of the American West, a region well-suited for mineral spectroscopy due to its dry, open landscapes.
Among early findings is the identification of a lithium-bearing clay called hectorite in the tailings of an abandoned California mine, among other locations. Lithium is one of roughly 50 minerals that USGS has flagged as critical to national security and the economy due to potential supply-chain risks.
Beyond mineral discovery, GEMx aims to help communities unlock new value from abandoned prospects while also pinpointing environmental hazards like acid mine drainage, which can occur when exposed rocks weather and release pollutants.
According to Dana Chadwick, an Earth system scientist at JPL, the technology opens up a broad range of potential questions—from land management and snowpack monitoring to wildfire risk assessment. He notes that critical minerals are just the beginning for AVIRIS-5.
GEMx is a four-year research effort funded by the USGS Earth MRI program, with support from funding authorized by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The project leverages NASA’s spectroscopic imaging advancements and USGS’s expertise in data analysis to extract meaningful insights about minerals and resources from the collected data.
