Only about 25% of the global seafloor is mapped, at roughly 100-m resolution. Compare this to the Moon’s entire surface, which was recently mapped to roughly 2-m resolution.

A new article in Eos discusses the InVADER project, which uses an integrated imaging and spectroscopy payload that includes Raman and laser-induced native fluorescence technologies to measure deep-sea geochemical environments.

This technology not only has utility for ocean exploration; it also holds the potential for use in a payload to explore ocean worlds outside of Earth, such as Enceladus (a moon of Saturn) or Europa (a moon of Jupiter), which are thought to have oceans of water below their icy crusts that could harbor the chemical building blocks of life, or even life itself.