Chandrayaan-3 APXS elemental abundance measurements at lunar high latitude

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Vadawale, Santosh V.; Mithun, N. P. S.; Shanmugam, M.; Basu Sarbadhikari, Amit; Sinha, Rishitosh K.; Bhatt, Megha; Vijayan, S.; Srivastava, Neeraj; Shukla, Anil D.; Murty, S. V. S.; Bhardwaj, Anil; Acharya, Y. B.; Patel, Arpit R.; Adalaja, Hiteshkumar L.; Vaishnava, C. S.; Saiguhan, B. S. Bharath; Singh, Nishant; Kumar, Sushil; Painkra, Deepak Kumar; Srivastava, Yash; Nair, Varsha M.; Ladiya, Tinkal; Goyal, Shiv Kumar; Tiwari, Neeraj K.; Narendranath, Shyama; Pillai, Netra S.; Hait, Arup Kumar; Patinge, Aaditya; Kumar, Abhishek; Satya, Neeraj; Subramanian, Vivek R.; Navle, Sonal G.; Venkatesh, R. G.; Abraham, Lalitha; Suresh, K.; Amitabh
• 署名单位: Department of Space (DoS), Government of India; Physical Research Laboratory - India; Department of Space (DoS), Government of India; Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO); U R Rao Satellite Centre (URSC); Department of Space (DoS), Government of India; Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO); Space Applications Centre (SAC)
• 刊物名称: Nature
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0028-5893
• DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07870-7
• 发表日期: 2024-09-05
• 页码: 327-+
• 关键词: pristine moon rocks; descartes region; chemical-composition; central peaks; petrology; geochemistry; anorthosite; origin; crust; clasts

摘要

The elemental composition of the lunar surface provides insights into mechanisms of the formation and evolution of the Moon(1,2). The chemical composition of lunar regolith have so far been precisely measured using the samples collected by the Apollo, Luna and Chang'e 5 missions, which are from equatorial to mid-latitude regions(3,4); lunar meteorites, whose location of origin on the Moon is unknown(5,6); and the in situ measurement from the Chang'e 3 and Chang'e 4 missions(7-9), which are from the mid-latitude regions of the Moon. Here we report the first in situ measurements of the elemental abundances in the lunar southern high-latitude regions by the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) experiment(10) aboard the Pragyan rover of India's Chandrayaan-3 mission. The 23 measurements in the vicinity of the Chandrayaan-3 landing site show that the local lunar terrain in this region is fairly uniform and primarily composed of ferroan anorthosite (FAN), a product of the lunar magma ocean (LMO) crystallization. However, observation of relatively higher magnesium abundance with respect to calcium in APXS measurements suggests the mixing of further mafic material. The compositional uniformity over a few tens of metres around the Chandrayaan-3 landing site provides an excellent ground truth for remote-sensing observations.