Issue |
A&A
Volume 682, February 2024
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A112 | |
Number of page(s) | 7 | |
Section | Planets and planetary systems | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202347577 | |
Published online | 08 February 2024 |
Visible and near-infrared spectral results of Chang’E-5 surficial and subsurface soils
1
Key Laboratory of Planetary Sciences, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Nanjing, PR China
e-mail: wu@pmo.ac.cn
2
State Key Laboratory of Lunar and Planetary Sciences, Macau University of Science and Technology,
Macau, China
3
CAS Center for Excellence in Comparative Planetology, University of Science and Technology of China,
Hefei, PR China
4
School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Science and Technology of China,
Hefei, PR China
5
Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application,
Nanjing, PR China
6
National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Remote Sensing Information and Image Analysis, Beijing Research Institute of Uranium Geology,
Beijing, PR China
Received:
27
July
2023
Accepted:
5
December
2023
Aims. Studies on high-resolution and high-precision laboratory reflectance spectra of the Moon have historically been restricted to the analysis of old Apollo samples (>3.0 Ga). In contrast, studies of young lunar soils have exclusively relied on the analysis of remote sensing spectra. In this study, we present the results of a laboratory spectral investigation of young lunar soils (~2.0 Ga) obtained by the Chang’E-5 (CE-5) mission.
Methods. We analyzed surficial and subsurface soils collected through scooped and drilled sampling methods. The laboratory reflectance spectra of the CE-5 soils were compared with those of Apollo soils and orbital spectra. Two methods were employed for maturity inversion. The relationship between the UV-vis color and TiO2 content of young basalts was also investigated.
Results. The CE-5 samples exhibit much fresher spectral features, including higher reflectance, deeper absorption depths, and a smaller visible and near-infrared continuum slope (VNCS), compared to pristine regolith. The subsurface soils sampled from a depth of approximately 10 cm exhibit a slightly fresher spectral feature compared to the surficial soils. Our comparison revealed a rapid rate of space weathering at the lunar surface compared to the vertical overturn. Compared to older iron-rich soils, the CE-5 soils have a larger reflectance but similar UV-vis ratios. The UV-vis ratio alone could not accurately predict the TiO2 content of all mare basalts. The CE-5 samples provide a new ground truth for estimating the TiO2 content of young lunar basalts, which have the largest uncertainty in TiO2 content, as estimated from spectral parameters. We find that the samples returned by the CE-5 mission represent disturbed soils and that they exhibit significantly fresher characteristics compared to pristine regolith, a fact that should be kept in mind when using samples as ground truth for remote sensing research.
Key words: radiative transfer / methods: data analysis / Moon / planets and satellites: surfaces / infrared: planetary systems
© The Authors 2024
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This article is published in open access under the Subscribe to Open model. Subscribe to A&A to support open access publication.
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.