Properties of Lunar Surface Rocks

Lunar Rocks

The Moon, like the Earth, is made of rocks. To learn about the Moon and its history, one has to learn something about lunar rocks—what they are made of, how they are studied and classified, and how our experiences in interpreting rocks on the Earth have been applied to rocks on the Moon. The lunar samples have provided our only direct information about the Moon’s minerals, chemical composition,...

Lunar Surface Mechanical Properties

The surface material at the Surveyor 5 site is granular and slightly cohesive. Spacecraft footpads plowed trenches in this material as the spacecraft slid during landing. For a compressible soil model, a static bearing capacity of 2.7 newtons/cm •' gave best agreement with the observations. Static firing of the vernier engines against the surface moved surface particles; a crater 20 cm in diame...

Physical Properties of the Lunar Surface

This chapter discusses the physical properties of the lunar surface, determined at depths varying from a few micrometers to a few tens of meters. The properties considered include geotechnical properties (those properties of a planetary surface needed to evaluate engineering problems, including the mechanical properties of soil and rock), electrical and electromagnetic properties, and the refle...

Cathodoluminescence of Lunar Minerals and Rocks

Fragments of Asteroids in Lunar Rocks

Introduction: Asteroidal fragments in lunar breccias and soils are critical to an understanding of the nature of the major impactors of the Moon. Observing FeNi metal is typically the simplest way for identifying asteroidal fragments. Schreibersite [(Fe,Ni) 3 P] in FeNi metal is a clear indicator of asteroidal contamination , although this was validated only after the realization that schreiber...