Lunar Regolith Breccias Met 01210, Pca 02007 and Dag 400: Their Importance in Understanding the Lunar Surface and Implications for the Scientific Analysis of D-cixs Data

Introduction: Lunar regolith breccias provide direct samples of the complicated, highly mixed nature of the Moon’s near-surface environment. By understanding their makeup it is hoped to be able to extrapolate to how large-scale remote-sensing datasets will detect geochemical information from a mixture of different lunar lithological terranes. Discussed here is an investigation into three lunar meteorite regolith breccias: Meteorite Hills 01210 (MET 01210), found in Antarctica in 2001; Pecora Escarpment 02007 (PCA 02007), found in Antarctica in 2002; and Dar al Gani 400 (DaG 400), found in the Libyan hot desert in 1998. We briefly consider the implications for interpreting data from D-CIXS, an innovative planetary X-ray spectrometer which is part of ESA’s SMART-1 mission to the Moon [1,2,3].