By 
December 31st, 2015
Group shot…China’s Chang’e 3 lander and Yutu rover.
Credit: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Data gleaned by China’s Yutu rover on the Moon has identified a new type of lunar basalt, shedding insight on lunar volcanism.
As noted by the state-run Xinhua news agency, the new type of basaltic rock was discovered at a fresh crater named Zi Wei. The measurements were made by Yutu’s Active Particle-induced X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and its Visible and Near-infrared Imaging Spectrometer (VNIS).
Measurements of the rock composition indicate that the basalt contains a high enrichment of titanium dioxide and olivine.
A team of scientists from China and the United States, led by Ling Zongcheng from China’s Shandong University, published the new findings in the journal Nature Communications.
Late-stage magma ocean
On December 14, 2013, the Chang’e -3 (CE-3) lander soft landed on the Moon in the northeast of the Mare Imbrium. The lander then deployed the instrument-loaded robot.
China’s Yutu lunar rover took this image of Change’3 lander.
Credit: NAOC/Chinese Academy of Sciences
Though the robot suffered mechanical woes after wheeling about for some 375 feet (114 meters), it gathered images and scientific data about the Moon.
While presently unable to traverse the Moon, Yutu reportedly continues to gather data, send and receive signals, and record images and video.
The researchers said that the area surveyed by the Yutu rover was covered in a late-stage magma ocean during the Moon’s development around three billion years ago. Rock samples from the U.S. Apollo and the former Soviet Union’s Luna missions mainly date back from the early-stage magma oceans between three and four billion years ago.
Freshly excavated crater
Location of the Chang’e-3 landing site.
(a) Chang’e-1 CCD image with boundaries of typical mare basalt units7. (b) Chang’e-2 CCD image and (c) LROC NAC image (LROC NAC M1142582775R). (d) The traverse map of the Yutu rover and the locations of APXS and VNIS measurements. (e) Panoramic view of the ‘Zi Wei’ crater by the Panoramic Camera on the Yutu rover at the CE3-0008 site.
Credit: Ling Zongcheng, et. al
In part, the scientific paper in Nature explains: “From a correlated analysis of the regolith derived from rocks at the CE-3 landing site, freshly excavated by Zi Wei crater, we recognize a new type of lunar basalt with a distinctive mineral assemblage compared with the samples from Apollo and Luna, and the lunar meteorites. The chemical and mineralogical information of the CE-3 landing site provides new ground truth for some of the youngest volcanism on the Moon.”
To view the entire scientific paper – “Correlated compositional and mineralogical investigations at the Chang’e-3 landing site” – go to:
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/151222/ncomms9880/full/ncomms9880.html#abstract
Posted in Space News
