First lunar map of the average soil atomic mass.

Gasnault, O. ; Feldman, W.

Technical Information Center Oak Ridge Tennessee

关键词: Moon;    Soils;    Geochemistry;    Aluminium;    Basalt;   

RP-ID  :  DE2001773346

学科分类：工程和技术（综合）

美国|英语

来源: National Technical Reports Library

【 摘 要 】

Measurements of indexes of lunar surface composition were successfully made during Lunar Prospector (LP) mission, using the Neutron Spectrometers (NS) (1). This capability is demonstrated for fast neutrons in Plates 1 of Maurice et al. (2) (similar to Figure 2 here). Inspection shows a clear distinction between mare basalt (bright) and highland terranes (2). Fast neutron simulations demonstrate the sensitivity of the fast neutron leakage flux to the presence of iron and titanium in the soil (3). The dependence of the flux to a third element (calcium or aluminum) was also suspected (4). We expand our previous work in this study by estimating fast neutron leakage fluxes for a more comprehensive set of assumed lunar compositions. We find a strong relationship between the fast neutron fluxes and the average soil atomic mass: This relation can be inverted to provide a map from the measured map of fast neutrons from the Moon.