Terrestrial Plagioclase Olivine Clinopyroxenite as a Possible Analogue of Lunar Rocks

Chemical individuality of lunar, meteoritic, and terrestrial silicate 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,...

Revisiting Plagioclase Optical Properties for Lunar Exploration

1 , C. M. Pieters 1 , M. D. Dyar 2 , K.A. Milam 3 , 1 Dept. of Geological Sciences, Brown University, Providence RI 02912, [email protected], [email protected], 2 Department of Astronomy, Mount Holyoke College, 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075, [email protected], 3 Department of Geological Sciences, Ohio University, 316 Clippinger Laboratories, Athens, OH 45701, [email protected].

LUNAR Mg-RICH ROCKS AS ANALOGS OF TERRESTRIAL KOMATIITES: IMPLICA- TIONS OF EARLY OUTGASSING OF EARTH'S VOLATILE ELEMENTS

Komatiites (ultramafic volcanic rocks) are common among Archean terrains, but rare or absent among rocks< 2.8 Ga old, which implies that the Archean upper mantle was fundamentally different from the modem one. The magma( s) parental to a certain group of lunar samples appear to have formed by exceptionally high-degree partial melting, like the magmas parental to komatiites: The Mg-rich suite of...

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...