Week Three

I got to look at a new map this week! This week I focused on understanding a new map of Vesta. This map had all of the geological areas already mapped by the Vesta team. This map will be helpful once I make my PGM marker mineral map because it will show what geological feature each mineral is on. For example, this might be something like there are some PGM marker minerals on a group of craters. This will also show what geological areas have the most PGM marker minerals. The PGM marker minerals I will be looking for include: sulfides, chromite, ultramafic minerals, unite, and Ni-Cu.


I organized all of the Vesta teams layers so they were easier for me to use. When these layers were made the map was split into sections and different people mapped each section. Because of this each section used different colors for different features. So I went through and made every feature that was the same one color so it was easier to tell where each feature is. Here is a picture of what their geological features look like. The yellow areas are craters, the blue areas are surface features, the green areas are location features, the geo contacts are maroon, the linear features are navy, and the purple is geo units.

Week Two

This week I continued to work in the QGIS software. I am still using a map of the surface of Vesta. I made some new layers on the map for the light and dark areas using polygons. Also, I added a layer for irregular features. Irregular features are just places where craters are a different color or places where there is a unique shape and color. Once I made these layers, I used the field calculator tool to find the area, perimeter and center of the light, dark, and irregular features. After I did this is was easy to find the basic statistics of each layer. These statistics came out to be really large numbers. At first this seemed wrong but upon closer examination realized the data was in centimeters. I also researched what each geometry tool is in the field calculator so when I use it again I will know what each tool means. For example, the tool xat or yat retrieves the x or y coordinate for the selected feature.

This picture shows the light, dark and irregular features on Vesta. The light areas are in blue and the dark areas are in red. I ignored the top of the map and the very bottom because there was no way to tell if the poles are light or dark. The irregular features are in green.

Week One

This week I was able to further learn how to use the QGIS software. I have been practicing using some of the mapping tools with a map of Vesta. This is just a map of Vesta craters and lines and I will not be using this for the mineral mapping but as a template. I outlined all of the large craters on the map with the polygon tool. I also tried to map lines but they did not save and for times sake we needed to move on. One of the important tools in QGIS is the statistical analysis it does. These last few days I have been learning how to use basic statistics in QGIS. More specifically, the geoprocessing tools. I used the convex Hull(s) tool and selected an area of craters to determine what the smallest amount of area is with the selected craters. I used the intersect tool to figure out where craters overlap. This will be helpful in determining what minerals are overlaid. After learning more about how QGIS works I feel more confident and I understand now how to use it. The mineral maps will be easier to use now because I am familiar with the software.

Also this week I got confirmation my abstract was selected for the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. This means I will get to present my findings on a poster at LPSC, one of the biggest space conferences!

Introduction

My name is Noelle, and I am a senior this year at BASIS Flagstaff. I am doing my Senior Research Project on the asteroid Vesta. I will be mapping the Platinum Group Metal (PGM) content on Vesta with the mapping software Quantum Geographic Information System (QGIS). Once I have mapped the PGMs I will be able to determine if it is viable to move mining for PGMs to asteroids, specifically Vesta.

We picked Vesta because it has the best surface for potential mining. We were originally going to use Ceres, but realized its surface has been changed and the marker minerals we would need to determine if there are PGMs are in the center of the dwarf planet. This is not optimal, so we decided Vesta would be a better subject because the marker minerals are on the surface. Vesta is one of the largest asteroids in the asteroid belt. Its mean diameter is 525 kilometers. Vesta's official name is "4 Vesta" because it was the fourth asteroid discovered.

My advisor for this project is Dr. Moses Milazzo. He works in the Astrogeology Department at USGS in Flagstaff. He will be advising me and helping me use the mapping software and providing me with the data from NASA's Dawn mission.

I am also going to present my findings on Vesta at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston at the end of March. I will be doing a poster presentation. This is an amazing opportunity I was given to present with college students, and I am very excited!

I will be going to the USGS Astrogeology Science Center for my volunteering. The link to USGS is:  https://astrogeology.usgs.gov