Actions for Basin Excavation, Lower Crust, Composition, and Bulk Moon Mass balance in Light of a Thin Crust

Email RIS file
Bookmark
Report an Issue

Basin Excavation, Lower Crust, Composition, and Bulk Moon Mass balance in Light of a Thin Crust

Author
Jolliff, B. L.
Published
March 18, 2013.
Physical Description
1 electronic document
Additional Creators
Ziegler, R. A. and Korotev, R. L.
Online Version

Availability

I Want It
I Want It

Finding items...

Restrictions on Access
Unclassified, Unlimited, Publicly available.
Free-to-read Unrestricted online access
Summary
New lunar gravity results from GRAIL have been interpreted to reflect an overall thin and low-density lunar crust. Accordingly, crustal thickness has been modeled as ranging from 0 to 60 km, with thinnest crust at the locations of Crisium and Moscoviense basins and thickest crust in the central farside highlands. The thin crust has cosmochemical significance, namely in terms of implications for the Moon s bulk composition, especially refractory lithophile elements that are strongly concentrated in the crust. Wieczorek et al. concluded that the bulk Moon need not be enriched compared to Earth in refractory lithophile elements such as Al. Less Al in the crust means less Al has been extracted from the mantle, permitting relatively low bulk lunar mantle Al contents and low pre- and post-crust-extraction values for the mantle (or the upper mantle if only the upper mantle underwent LMO melting). Simple mass-balance calculations using the method of [4] suggests that the same conclusion might hold for Th and the entire suite of refractory lithophile elements that are incompatible in olivine and pyroxene, including the KREEP elements, that are likewise concentrated in the crust.
Other Subject(s)
Collection
NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) Collection.
Note
Document ID: 20130009073.
JSC-CN-27962.
Lunar and Planetary Science Conference; 18-22 Mar. 2013; The Woodlands, TX; United States.
Terms of Use and Reproduction
Copyright, Distribution as joint owner in the copyright.
View MARC record | catkey: 15975791