Spectroscopic data acquired in RELAB provide the interpretive foundation 
            upon which compositional information about unexplored or unsampled planetary surfaces 
            is derived from remotely obtained reflectance spectra. The Keck/NASA Reflectance
            Experiment Laboratory (RELAB, http://planetary.brown.edu/relab/) is 
            supported by NASA as a multi-user spectroscopy facility, and laboratory time can 
            be made available at no charge to investigators who are in funded NASA programs.
            
            RELAB has two operational spectrometers available to NASA scientists:
            1) a near-ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared bidirectional spectrometer and
            2) a near- and mid- infrared FT-IR spectrometer.
            
            The overall purpose of the design and operation of the RELAB bidirectional 
            spectrometer is to obtain high precision, high spectral resolution, bidirectional 
            reflectance spectra of earth and planetary materials. One of the key elements of 
            its design is the ability to measure samples using viewing geometries specified by 
            the user. This allows investigators to simulate the geometry of natural observing 
            conditions for particulate samples as small as 50 mg.