# Connecting Meteorite Spectra to Lunar Surface Composition Using Hyperspectral Imaging and Machine Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.24323 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.24323/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [Explaining the Explainer: A First Theoretical Analysis of LIME](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.03447/) (2020)
- [Insights into Lunar Mineralogy: An Unsupervised Approach for Clustering of the Moon Mineral Mapper (M3) spectral data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.03186/) (2024)
- [Using Machine Learning for Lunar Mineralogy-I: Hyperspectral Imaging of Volcanic Samples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22617/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present an innovative, cost-effective framework integrating laboratory Hyperspectral Imaging (HSI) of the Bechar010 Lunar meteorite with ground-based lunar HSI and supervised Machine Learning(ML) to generate high-fidelity mineralogical maps. A 3mm thin section of Bechar010 was imaged under a microscope with a 30mm focal length lens at 150mm working distance, using 6x binning to increase the signal-to-noise ratio, producing a data cube (X × Y × λ = 791 × 1024 × 224, 0.24mm × 0.2mm resolution) across 400-1000nm (224 bands, 2.7nm spectral sampling, 5.5nm full width at half maximum spectral resolution) using a Specim FX10 camera. Ground-based lunar HSI was captured with a Celestron 8SE telescope (3km/pixel), yielded a data cube (371 × 1024 × 224). Solar calibration was performed using a Spectralon reference (99% reflectance <2% error) ensured accurate reflectance spectra. A Support Vector Machine (SVM) with a radial basis function kernel, trained on expert-labeled spectra, achieved 93.7% classification accuracy(5-fold cross-validation) for olivine (92% precision, 90% recall) and pyroxene (88% precision, 86% recall) in Bechar 010. LIME analysis identified key wavelengths (e.g., 485nm, 22.4% for M3; 715nm, 20.6% for M6) across 10 pre-selected regions (M1 to M10), indicating olivine-rich (Highland-like) and pyroxene-rich (Mare-like) compositions. SAM analysis revealed angles from 0.26 radian to 0.66 radian, linking M3 and M9 to Highlands and M6 and M10 to Mares. K-means clustering of Lunar data identified 10 mineralogical clusters (88% accuracy), validated against Chandrayaan-1 Moon mineralogy Mapper (rm M3) data (140m/pixel, 10nm spectral resolution).A novel push-broom HSI approach with a telescope achieves 0.8 arcsec resolution for lunar spectroscopy, inspiring full-sky multi-object spectral mapping.