Geology of the Moon

The Schrödinger impact event carved two canyons on the moon comparable in size to the Grand Canyon of North America. The directions of those canyons imply little debris covers the > 4-billion-year-old units that will be explored by Artemis astronauts.

Ilmenite grains collected in lunar regolith sampled by the Chang’e-5 sample return mission reveal that the 1 m deep core contains a mixture of space-weathered material, buried ejecta from the nearby Xu Guangqi crater, and a lunar paleoregolith.

The authors map extensive plains terrains in the Moon’s south polar region, which originate from impact basin ejecta materials. These plains serve as attractive landing sites for future exploration of lunar polar volatiles and early bombardment history.

Metallic iron nanoparticles within impact-generated glass on the Moon contain very high concentrations of Helium-3 imparted by space weathering and may represent an important helium reservoir, according to nanoscale observations of lunar soil samples.

Petrological reaction experiments and magnesium isotope data suggest that reactive flow with mantle cumulates can explain the composition of Ti-rich basaltic magmas.

In this study, the authors map the lunar surface chemistry. They achieve this through a combination of deep learning and actual samples from the Chinese Chang’e-5 mission.

This work estimates the eruption volume of the young Chang’e-5 lunar samples using diffusion chronology and thermodynamic simulations, and finds that there was an increase in volcanic eruption flux about 2.0 billion years ago.

Analysis of lunar soils sampled by the Chang’e-5 mission suggests that impact glass beads may host a substantial inventory of solar wind-derived water on the Moon’s surface.

The Marius Hills, located in central Oceanus Procellarum, form the largest volcanic dome complex on the Moon. Here, gravity data is used to image the magmatic structures in this region. Magmatic conduits connect the northern and southern intrusions of Marius Hills and link them with the structures along Procellarum’s western border.

The first magma on the Moon formed by decompression melting of orthopyroxene-dominated mantle rocks facilitated by density-driven mantle overturn, according to petrographic modelling and observations of lunar highland samples from the Chang’e-5 mission

Partial remelting of KREEP – potassium, rare earth element, phosphorus – basalts on the moon, could explain the occurrence of highly silicic magmatism, which on Earth requires water and plate tectonics, according to phase equilibrium simulations

Constraints on the cratering history of the Moon from the modelled production and removal of crustal porosity by impacts are inconsistent with an extended period of bombardment.

The lunar mantle may have remained reduced, according to the oxygen fugacity of 2.0 Ga Chang’e-5 basalt that is similar to 3.6 − 3.0 Ga Apollo basalts and pyroclastic glasses.

Single-crystal paleointensity measurements of Apollo samples suggest that if the Moon’s core produced a magnetic field, it disappeared by 4.36 billion years ago, possibly allowing a record of Earth’s Hadean atmosphere to be preserved in the lunar regolith.

The Moon’s gravity field preserves a record of the overturn of the early lunar mantle and sinking of dense ilmenite-bearing cumulates, according to a comparison of Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory gravity data and geodynamic models.

Overturn of late stage lunar magma ocean cumulates triggers a rapid & short-lived episode of lower mantle melting that explains the key volume, geochronological, & spatial characteristics of the earliest secondary crust on the Moon (Mg-suite).

The lunar basalts sampled by the Chang’e-5 mission originated from melting of a clinopyroxene-rich mantle source enhanced in radioactive elements, potentially explaining this late lunar volcanism, according to sample analysis and crystallization modelling.