New rock type found on moon

New rock type found on moon

For the first time in decades, astronomers have identified a new rock type on the moon. Tucked away on the lunar farside, unseen until a space probe spotted its oddmineralogy, are a few deposits of what is probably ancient material that originated deep inside the moon.“These are very unusual areas,” said Carle Pieters, a planetary geologist at Brown University inProvidence, R.I., who reported the finding November 2 at a meeting of the Geological Society of America.
Pieters has dubbed the new rock type OOS, because it is rich in the minerals orthopyroxene,olivine and spinel. Lunar scientists are particularly intrigued by the amount of spinel in the rock; every other part of the moon has only trace amounts. On Earth, in larger chunks, spinel is a gemstoneprized in such collections as the British crown jewels.The discovery comes from the Chandrayaan-1 mission, an Indian probe that orbited the moon for 10 months in 2008–2009. It carried a NASAinstrument, the Moon Mineralogy Mapper or M3. By studying how much light was reflected from various parts of the lunar surface, and at what wavelength, M3 analyzed the moon’s mineralogical makeup inunprecedented detail. “It is the first fully capable spectrometer flown to the moon,” said lunar scientist Thomas McCord of the Bear Fight Institute in Winthrop, Wash. Last year, using M3, Pieters and hercolleagues reported finding spectral evidence of water on the moon.
Deep within a basin called Moscoviense, M3 spotted areas where light was being strongly absorbed at a wavelength of 2 micrometers. Thatparticular absorption is an almost certain sign that magnesium-rich spinel is present, said Pieters.
How the material got there remains something of a mystery. Other images of the same part ofMoscoviense show that the surface looks undisturbed, with smooth soil all around. The absence of any impact craters suggests that the spinel-rich areas must have been on the surface for a long time.
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