Lunar regolith and substructure at Chang’E-4 landing site in South Pole–Aitken basin

Zhang, Jinhai; Zhou, Bin; Lin, Yangting; Zhu, M. H.; Song, Haipeng; Dong, Zaili; Gao, Yanfang; Di, Kaichang; Yang, Wei; Hong, Lin; Yang, Jianfeng; Liu, Enhai; Wang, Lei; Lin, Yan-Bo; Li, Chao; Yue, Zongyu; Yao, Zhen‐Xing; Ouyang, Ziyuan

doi:10.1038/s41550-020-1197-x

Cited by 75 publications

(86 citation statements)

References 52 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…the 537-km Apollo Basin), younger, smaller craters may instead have churned, redistributed (e.g., Huang et al, 2018;C. Li et al, 2020;Qiao et al, 2019;J. Zhang et al, 2020)and re-exposed ejecta materials from beneath a mixed, diluted regolith.…”

Section: Distribution and Evolution Of Mantle-derived Spa Ejectamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While some of the largest impact structures are large enough to penetrate through and locally remove SPA ejecta (e.g. the 537‐km Apollo Basin), younger, smaller craters may instead have churned, redistributed (e.g., Huang et al., 2018; C. Li et al., 2020; Qiao et al., 2019; J. Zhang et al., 2020)and re‐exposed ejecta materials from beneath a mixed, diluted regolith. Two such craters include Birkeland (82 km; Eratosthenian in age (Wilhelms et al., 1987)) and Oresme V (51 km; Upper Imbrian in age (Wilhelms et al., 1987)); see Figure 1 Volcanic resurfacing : Where present, volcanic resurfacing deposits such as mare basalts, Mons Marguerite (formerly Mafic Mound), and SPACA mask the surface expression of mantle‐derived ejecta (Moriarty & Pieters, 2015, 2018; Pieters et al., 2001; Yingst & Head, 1999)…”

Section: Distribution and Evolution Of Mantle‐derived Spa Ejectamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Distribution and Evolution Of Mantle‐derived Spa Ejectamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Evidence for a Stratified Upper Mantle Preserved Within the South Pole‐Aitken Basin

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The evolution and compositional structure of the lunar mantle has been extensively modeled but insufficiently constrained by observations. Here, we identify and characterize mantle materials exposed by the Moon's largest impact basin to better understand the composition, stratigraphy, and evolution of the upper mantle. The vast South Pole-Aitken Basin (SPA) exhibits a broad, crescent-shaped thorium and potassium distribution. These incompatible elements are predicted to be concentrated in the dregs of the lunar magma ocean during end-stage crystallization. Through consideration of basin formation models convolved with subsequent geologic evolution, we demonstrate that the distribution and implied stratigraphy of Th-and K-bearing materials across SPA are consistent with an upper mantle ejecta origin. The most pristine exposures of these materials are confined to northwest SPA and also exhibit elevated Ti and Fe (relative to the farside highlands) in association with a gabbronoritic mineralogy. This is consistent with latestage magma ocean assemblages predicted by petrologic models. In contrast, SPA impact melt derived from greater depths is associated with a low-Ca pyroxene-dominated assemblage. Together, these compositional patterns are evidence for a stratified ancient upper mantle. Importantly, the incompatible-element-enriched, ilmenite-bearing ferroan gabbronoritic cumulates evidently had not participated in gravitational overturn at the time of SPA formation. Contrary to recent hypotheses invoking nearside sequestration of incompatible elements to explain hemispherical differences in crustal building and volcanic resurfacing, it follows that incompatible elements were globally distributed in the magma ocean at the time of SPA formation. Plain Language Summary Like the Earth, the Moon is layered into a crust and mantle. The Moon's layering was shaped by an early global melting event known as the "Lunar Magma Ocean." As the magma ocean solidified, dense minerals sank to form the mantle, while less-dense minerals floated to form the crust. Elements such as thorium are not easily incorporated into mineral structures, and remain in the liquid. Because of this, a thorium-rich dreg layer was sandwiched between the crust and mantle. These dregs are very dense and are expected to sink into the underlying mantle during or soon after crystallization. We demonstrate that the Moon's largest and oldest impact basin excavated material from this dense, thorium-rich layer before it sank. The exposed material was then diluted and obscured by four billion years of impact cratering and volcanic eruptions. However, we identify several pristine exposures created by recent craters. The impact basin also melted rocks from greater depths than the rocks it ejected. These melted rocks exhibit a much different composition. This indicates that the lunar upper mantle included two compositionally distinct layers that were exposed in different ways by this large impact event. These results have important implications for understanding the ...

show abstract

Section: Distribution and Evolution Of Mantle-derived Spa Ejectamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Distribution and Evolution Of Mantle‐derived Spa Ejectamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Distribution and Evolution Of Mantle‐derived Spa Ejectamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Evidence for a Stratified Upper Mantle Preserved Within the South Pole‐Aitken Basin

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Unlike the Apollo Lunar Sounder Experiment [5] and Lunar Radar Sounder [6], Chang'E-3 conducted the first in situ Lunar Penetrating Radar (LPR) exploration with a wide frequency band and high spatial resolution in the Imbrium basin, showing the detailed structure of lunar regolith [7,8]. In addition, Chang'E-4 (CE-4) is conducting the first in situ exploration on the farside of the Moon in the Von Kármán crater at the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin [9,10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The LPR aboard on the Yutu-2 Rover of CE-4 is a nanosecond imaging radar which is carrier-free and operates in the time domain [11], and has two channels (CH-1 and CH-2) with center frequencies at 60 and 500 MHz, respectively [10]. CH-1 is used to map the structure of the shallow lunar crust with meter-level resolution and the CH-2 is used to detect the structure of regolith with a depth resolution of 0.3 m, which contains one transmitting antenna and two receiving antennas of different offsets-namely, CH-2A and CH-2B [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rock Location and Property Analysis of Lunar Regolith at Chang’E-4 Landing Site Based on Local Correlation and Semblance Analysis

Song

Zhang

et al. 2020

Remote Sensing

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Lunar Penetrating Radar (LPR) onboard the Yutu-2 rover from China’s Chang’E-4 (CE-4) mission is used to probe the subsurface structure and the near-surface stratigraphic structure of the lunar regolith on the farside of the Moon. Structural analysis of regolith could provide abundant information on the formation and evolution of the Moon, in which the rock location and property analysis are the key procedures during the interpretation of LPR data. The subsurface velocity of electromagnetic waves is a vital parameter for stratigraphic division, rock location estimates, and calculating the rock properties in the interpretation of LPR data. In this paper, we propose a procedure that combines the regolith rock extraction technique based on local correlation between the two sets of LPR high-frequency channel data and the common offset semblance analysis to determine the velocity from LPR diffraction hyperbola. We consider the heterogeneity of the regolith and derive the relative permittivity distribution based on the rock extraction and semblance analysis. The numerical simulation results show that the procedure is able to obtain the high-precision position and properties of the rock. Furthermore, we apply this procedure to CE-4 LPR data and obtain preferable estimations of the rock locations and the properties of the lunar subsurface regolith.

show abstract

Innovative developments in lunar and planetary science promoted by China’s lunar exploration

Yan

Liu

2023

Sci. China Earth Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Lunar regolith and substructure at Chang’E-4 landing site in South Pole–Aitken basin

Cited by 75 publications

References 52 publications

Evidence for a Stratified Upper Mantle Preserved Within the South Pole‐Aitken Basin

Evidence for a Stratified Upper Mantle Preserved Within the South Pole‐Aitken Basin

Rock Location and Property Analysis of Lunar Regolith at Chang’E-4 Landing Site Based on Local Correlation and Semblance Analysis

Innovative developments in lunar and planetary science promoted by China’s lunar exploration

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About