Spectral interpretation of late-stage mare basalt mineralogy unveiled by Chang’E-5 samples

作者：Dawei Liu, Xing Wang, Jianjun Liu, Bin Liu, Xin Ren, Chen Yuan, Zhaopeng Chen, Hongbo Zhang, Guangliang Zhang, Qin Zhou, Zhoubin Zhang, Qiang Fu, Chunlai Li · 发表于：Nature Communications · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.1038/s41467-022-33670-6 · 被引用次数：35 · 研究领域：Planetary Science and Exploration、Geological and Geochemical Analysis、Geochemistry and Geologic Mapping

The western maria of lunar near-side are widely covered with late-stage mare basalts. Due to the lack of returned samples, the mineralogy of the late-stage basalts was previously speculated as having high abundance of olivine based on remote sensing observation. However, here we show that Chang'E-5 (CE-5) lunar soil samples, the ground truth from past unsampled lunar late-stage mare region, give a different interpretation. Our laboratory spectroscopic and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses of the CE-5 soil samples demonstrate that their special spectral signatures are representative of iron-rich high-Ca pyroxene rather than olivine. Considering the spectral and compositional similarities between CE-5 soil samples and lunar late-stage basalts, the mineralogy and petrology of CE-5 samples may be able to be generalized to entire lunar late-stage basalts. Our study would provide a constraint on the thermal evolution of the Moon, especially the young lunar volcanism.