Mare Basalt Fragments in Lunar Highlands Meteorites: Connecting Measured Ti Abundances with Orbital
نویسندگان
چکیده
Lunar highland meteorites contain small proportions of mare basalt fragments, which are important for defining lunar basalts in areas not visited by Apollo/Luna. We analyzed seven mare basalt fragments from three highland meteorites, and retrieved the Ti contents of their parent magmas from core pyroxene compositions. The analyzed clasts span the range of VLT and low-Ti, basalts in Apollo & Luna samples. A histogram of inferred TiO2 contents of their parent magmas is much like that inferred from global remote sensing, and not like that of the Apollo mare basalts. Introduction: Many lunar meteorites are from areas that were not sampled by the Apollo or Luna missions, and so provide information on lunar rock types outside the explored areas. In particular, lunar highlands meteorites provide samples from regions (like the far side) that are not obviously represented in the Apollo samples [1]. Many highlands meteorites contain fragments of mare basalts, which have not been well characterized. Our study focuses on basalt clasts in the highlands meteorites ALH81005, MAC88105, and QUE 93069. A few mare clasts from these meteorites have been described or mentioned previously [2].
منابع مشابه
Petrologic Comparisons of Lunar Mare Basalt Meteorites Dh-287A and NWA
Introduction: It is intriguing that the majority of lunar meteorites (~30) have been discovered in the hot deserts of Middle-East and North Africa. In contrast, of 10s of thousands of meteorite finds from Antarctica over 30 years, only a handful (~5) are lunar. This bias towards the lunar meteorite recovery from the hot deserts may be due to the preferential fall of lunar meteorites in these re...
متن کاملMAC88105-A regolith breccia from the lunar highlands: Miner~o~c~ petrological, and geochemical studies*
The new large Iunar meteorite MAC88105 is a dense breccia, with lithic and mineral clasts and fragments set into a welded matrix. It is a regolith breccia which shows some recrystallization and evidence for a late shock event during which anorthositic glass veins were formed. Shock effects (most probably due to the impact ejection from the moon) are present throughout the sample and require a s...
متن کاملWhat Lunar Meteorites Tell Us about the Lunar Highlands Crust
The first meteorite to be found 1 that was eventually (1984) recognized to have originated from the Moon is Yamato 791197 [1]. The find date, November 20, 1979, was four days after the end of the first Conference on the Lunar Highland Crust [2]. Since then, >75 other lunar meteorites have been found, and these meteorites provide information about the lunar highlands that was not known from stud...
متن کاملNew Insights into the Complex History of Lunar Highlands: Alha 81005 under Reinvestigation
Introduction: Lunar meteorites come from random sites on the Moon (including areas not visited by Apollo or Lunar missions) and so are crucial for understanding the development of the whole moon, and as ground truth for lunar remote sensing. Data from the Lunar Prospector and Clementine spacecraft show that, relative to the Apollo and Luna landing sites, most of the lunar surface has low abunda...
متن کاملAr-Ar studies of two lunar mare rocks: LAP02205 and EET96008
Introduction: Since 1999, the lunar sample collection has been supplemented with about 50 meteorites from the Moon. Many of these stones are paired, and the total number of different lunar meteorites in the present collection is 37. Of these 37, five are lunar mare basalts, which represents ~14% of the lunar meteorite collection. Considering that the maria represent ~17% of the lunar surface, t...
متن کامل