At an altitude of 60,000 feet, NASA is searching for the minerals essential for powering smartphones, electric vehicles, and clean energy sources.

Comparable sensors have been utilized on space missions to gather information about remote planets.

The high-flying ER-2 aircraft takes off at Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California in search of minerals. (Image credit: NASA/Christopher LC Clark)

Jet Ropulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the 1970s. Roughly the dimensions of a microwave, AVIRIS-5 is housed in the nose of one of NASA's ER-2 high-altitude research planes. The sensor's initial version was used in 1986, and JPL has been enhancing it continuously since then.

AVIRIS-5 is among the latest instruments in a collaborative research initiative by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) known as GEMx. The initiative aims to locate surface indications of essential minerals, vital for producing consumer electronics and military technologies.

GEMx is a current initiative. One reason deserts are excellent locations for mineral spectroscopy is the scarcity of trees. As of 2023, the collaborative team has traversed over 366,000 square miles (950,000 square kilometers) across the extensive area of the American West.

Numerous minerals the GEMx project aims to discover possess "distinct chemical structures" that correspond to varying wavelengths of light. Through the detection of this reflected light, AVIRIS-5 can reveal the distinctive "spectral fingerprints" associated with the essential minerals.

The USGS characterizes critical minerals as those that "have major implications for the economic or national security of the U.S." This encompasses aluminum, lithium, zinc, graphite, tungsten, and titanium. Minerals like these are utilized in the production supply chains for essential technologies such as semiconductors, solar energy systems, or batteries for electric vehicles.

In March 2025, the White House released an Executive Order to enhance the output of these minerals "to the greatest extent possible," indicating that U.S. national and economic security are "now sharply jeopardized by our dependence on unfriendly foreign nations' mineral production."

In addition to assisting in the search for essential minerals, spectrometers like AVIRIS-5, developed by JPL over the years, have been employed on spacecraft to aid NASA scientists in gaining insights into planets within our solar system, including Mars, Mercury, and Pluto.

"A mission is heading to Europa, a moon of Jupiter covered in ocean, to look for the chemical elements essential for sustaining life," a spokesperson from JPL stated.

Dana Chadwick, a JPL Earth system scientist, imagines numerous additional applications for the new sensor beyond searching for minerals in the desert.

"The variety of questions that can be addressed with this technology is truly exhilarating, ranging from land management to snowpack water supplies to wildfire hazards," Chadwick stated. "AVIRIS-5 is only getting started with critical minerals."