Submicroscopic metallic iron in lunar soils estimated from the in situ spectra of the Chang'E‐3 mission

Wang, Zhenchao; Wu, Yunzhao; Blewett, D. T.; Cloutis, E. A.; Zheng, Yongchun; Chen, Jun

doi:10.1002/2017gl072652

Cited by 27 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Therefore, the soil in CE‐4 and Apollo 15 landing areas are more mature. The Is/FeO maturity index of the CE‐4 landing site (82 ± 15) is higher than that of the CE‐3 landing site (~53), which indicates that the lunar soil of the CE‐4 landing site is more mature than that of the CE‐3 landing site (Gou et al, 2020; Wang et al, 2017). Agglutinates are the major product of space weathering, the proportion of which in lunar soil increases with the soil maturity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Physical and Mechanical Characteristics of Lunar Soil at the Chang'E‐4 Landing Site

Tang

Liu

Wang

et al. 2020

Geophysical Research Letters

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Chang'E-4, with the Yutu-2 rover, is the first lunar probe to successfully land and conduct a tour on the far side of the Moon from early 2019. We analyze the physical and mechanical characteristics of lunar soil through the in situ terrain data collected by the panoramic camera onboard the Yutu-2 rover. With the slip ratio and wheel sinkage obtained by the derived Digital Orthophoto Map (DOM) and Digital Elevation Model (DEM), the mechanical parameters of lunar soil are derived from the slip-sinkage model. These mechanical parameters and wheel size of the rover are used to obtain the pressure-sinkage curves, which can estimate the lunar soil strength. The experimental results indicate that the soil strength at the Chang'E-4 landing site is much higher than that at the Chang'E-3 landing site. The discrepancies in lunar soil strength between the two landing sites may be related to the local surface topography and degree of space weathering. Plain Language Summary The knowledge of the physical and mechanical characteristics of lunar soil is of fundamental importance because it is the basis for mineral resource exploration and engineering activity aimed at the construction of lunar bases. The Chang'E-4 landing site is within the mare floor of the Von Kármán crater inside the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin. The ejecta from the nearby impact craters has covered the Chang'E-4 landing area. Besides, the lunar soil of the Chang'E-4 landing area has been relatively mature. Here, a method of analyzing the characteristics of lunar soil is introduced to provide an opportunity to understand the physical and mechanical properties of the mature lunar soil at the Chang'E-4 landing site. With the terrain data collected by the panoramic camera onboard the Yutu-2 rover, we can get the relationship curve of the interaction between the rover wheels and lunar soil, such as the pressure-sinkage curve. The pressure-sinkage curves can intuitively reflect the discrepancies of lunar soil strength at the Chang'E-4 and Chang'E-3 landing sites, which may bear a big relationship to the local surface morphology and degree of space weathering.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Physical and Mechanical Characteristics of Lunar Soil at the Chang'E‐4 Landing Site

Tang

Liu

Wang

et al. 2020

Geophysical Research Letters

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“…More importantly, the roughness, compactness, maturity, and particle size between the laboratory sample and the actual lunar surface differ by large amounts. The in situ spectra measured by the Visible-Near Infrared Spectrometer (VNIS) on board the China's Chang'E-3 (CE-3) "Yutu" rover revealed that the uppermost surficial regolith is much richer in weathered products, which significantly darken the lunar surface and suppress spectral bands, than the regolith immediately below, and samples returned to Earth could not represent actual lunar surface (Wang et al 2017;Wu & Hapke 2018). Therefore, a spacecraft calibration using the laboratory spectra will have a very large error.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Absolute Reflectance and New Calibration Site of the Moon

Wang

Cai

et al. 2018

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How bright the Moon is forms a simple but fundamental and important question. Although numerous efforts have been made to answer this question such as use of sophisticated electro-optical measurements and suggestions for calibration sites, the answer is still debated. An in situ measurement with a calibration panel on the surface of the Moon is crucial for obtaining the accurate absolute reflectance and resolving the debate. China's Chang'E-3 (CE-3) "Yutu" rover accomplished this type of measurement using the Visible-Near Infrared Spectrometer (VNIS). The measurements of the VNIS, which were at large emission and phase angles, complement existing measurements for the range of photometric geometry. The in situ reflectance shows that the CE-3 landing site is very dark with an average reflectance of 3.86% in the visible bands. The results are compared with recent mission instruments: the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Wide Angle Camera (WAC), the Spectral Profiler (SP) on board the SELENE, the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M 3) on board the Chandrayaan-1, and the Chang'E-1 Interference Imaging Spectrometer (IIM). The differences in the measurements of these instruments are very large and indicate inherent differences in their absolute calibration. The M 3 and IIM measurements are smaller than LROC WAC and SP, and the VNIS measurement falls between these two pairs. When using the Moon as a radiance source for the on-orbit calibration of spacecraft instruments, one should be cautious about the data. We propose that the CE-3 landing site, a young and homogeneous surface, should serve as the new calibration site.

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“…The data including CE-3 VNIR (Visible and Near-infrared Imaging Spectrometer) data and mineral endmembers were used in this study: 1) CE-3 VNIS data Chang'E-3 landed in northern Mare Imbrium at 44.1205º N, 19.5102º W (Wang, Wu et al 2017). Spectra of four locations were measured using the VNIR spectrometer instruments (Fig.1).…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Mineral Abundance and Particle Size Distribution Derived From in-Situ Spectra Measurements of Yutu Rover of Chang’e-3

Lin

Zhang

Yang

et al. 2017

Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.

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ABSTRACT:From geologic perspective, understanding the types, abundance, and size distributions of minerals allows us to address what geologic processes have been active on the lunar and planetary surface. The imaging spectrometer which was carried by the Yutu Rover of Chinese Chang'E-3 mission collected the reflectance at four different sites at the height of ~1m, providing a new insight to understand the lunar surface. The mineral composition and Particle Size Distribution (PSD) of these four sites were derived in this study using a Radiative Transfer Model (RTM) and Sparse Unmixing (SU) algorithm. The endmembers used were clinopyroxene, orthopyroxene, olivine, plagioclase and agglutinate collected from the lunar sample spectral dataset in RELAB. The results show that the agglutinate, clinopyroxene and olivine are the dominant minerals around the landing site. In location Node E, the abundance of agglutinate can reach up to 70%, and the abundances of clinopyroxene and olivine are around 10%. The mean particle sizes and the deviations of these endmembers were retrieved. PSDs of all these endmembers are close to normal distribution, and differences exist in the mean particle sizes, indicating the difference of space weathering rate of these endmembers. * Corresponding author. zhangxia@radi.ac.cn

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Submicroscopic metallic iron in lunar soils estimated from the in situ spectra of the Chang'E‐3 mission

Cited by 27 publications

References 38 publications

Physical and Mechanical Characteristics of Lunar Soil at the Chang'E‐4 Landing Site

Physical and Mechanical Characteristics of Lunar Soil at the Chang'E‐4 Landing Site

The Absolute Reflectance and New Calibration Site of the Moon

Mineral Abundance and Particle Size Distribution Derived From in-Situ Spectra Measurements of Yutu Rover of Chang’e-3

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