Prospects for Dating the South Pole-Aitken Basin through Impact-Melt Rock Samples
Much of the present debate about the ages of the nearside basins arises because of the difficulty in understanding the relationship of recovered samples to their parent basin. The Apollo breccias are from basin ejecta formations, which are ballistically-emplaced distal deposits that have mixed prove...
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ftnasantrs:oai:casi.ntrs.nasa.gov:20160013272 2023-05-15T18:22:06+02:00 Prospects for Dating the South Pole-Aitken Basin through Impact-Melt Rock Samples Coker, R. F. Cohen, B. A. Petro, N. E. Unclassified, Unlimited, Publicly available November 2016 application/pdf http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20160013272 unknown Document ID: 20160013272 http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20160013272 No Copyright CASI Lunar and Planetary Science and Exploration MSFC-E-DAA-TN35486 Lunar Exploration and Analysis Group (LEAG); Nov 01, 2016 - Nov 03, 2016; Columbia, MD; United States 2016 ftnasantrs 2019-08-31T23:09:13Z Much of the present debate about the ages of the nearside basins arises because of the difficulty in understanding the relationship of recovered samples to their parent basin. The Apollo breccias are from basin ejecta formations, which are ballistically-emplaced distal deposits that have mixed provenances. The Nectaris, Imbrium, and Serenitatis basins all have mare-basalt fill obscuring their original melt sheets, so geochemical ties are indirect. Though the geological processes acting to vertically and laterally mix materials into regolith are the same as at the Apollo sites, the SPA interior is a fundamentally different geologic setting than the Apollo sites. The South Pole-Aitken basin was likely filled by a large impact melt sheet, possibly differentiated into cumulate horizons. It is on this distinctive melt sheet that the regolith has formed, somewhat diluting but not erasing the prominent geochemical signature seen from orbital assets. By analogy to the Apollo 16 site, a zeroth-order expectation is that bulk samples taken from regolith within SPA will contain abundant samples gardened from the SPA melt sheet. However, questions persist as to whether the SPA melt sheet has been so extensively contaminated with foreign ejecta that a simple robotic scoop sample of such regolith would be unlikely to yield the age of the basin. Other/Unknown Material South pole NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) Aitken ENVELOPE(-44.516,-44.516,-60.733,-60.733) South Pole |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) |
op_collection_id |
ftnasantrs |
language |
unknown |
topic |
Lunar and Planetary Science and Exploration |
spellingShingle |
Lunar and Planetary Science and Exploration Coker, R. F. Cohen, B. A. Petro, N. E. Prospects for Dating the South Pole-Aitken Basin through Impact-Melt Rock Samples |
topic_facet |
Lunar and Planetary Science and Exploration |
description |
Much of the present debate about the ages of the nearside basins arises because of the difficulty in understanding the relationship of recovered samples to their parent basin. The Apollo breccias are from basin ejecta formations, which are ballistically-emplaced distal deposits that have mixed provenances. The Nectaris, Imbrium, and Serenitatis basins all have mare-basalt fill obscuring their original melt sheets, so geochemical ties are indirect. Though the geological processes acting to vertically and laterally mix materials into regolith are the same as at the Apollo sites, the SPA interior is a fundamentally different geologic setting than the Apollo sites. The South Pole-Aitken basin was likely filled by a large impact melt sheet, possibly differentiated into cumulate horizons. It is on this distinctive melt sheet that the regolith has formed, somewhat diluting but not erasing the prominent geochemical signature seen from orbital assets. By analogy to the Apollo 16 site, a zeroth-order expectation is that bulk samples taken from regolith within SPA will contain abundant samples gardened from the SPA melt sheet. However, questions persist as to whether the SPA melt sheet has been so extensively contaminated with foreign ejecta that a simple robotic scoop sample of such regolith would be unlikely to yield the age of the basin. |
format |
Other/Unknown Material |
author |
Coker, R. F. Cohen, B. A. Petro, N. E. |
author_facet |
Coker, R. F. Cohen, B. A. Petro, N. E. |
author_sort |
Coker, R. F. |
title |
Prospects for Dating the South Pole-Aitken Basin through Impact-Melt Rock Samples |
title_short |
Prospects for Dating the South Pole-Aitken Basin through Impact-Melt Rock Samples |
title_full |
Prospects for Dating the South Pole-Aitken Basin through Impact-Melt Rock Samples |
title_fullStr |
Prospects for Dating the South Pole-Aitken Basin through Impact-Melt Rock Samples |
title_full_unstemmed |
Prospects for Dating the South Pole-Aitken Basin through Impact-Melt Rock Samples |
title_sort |
prospects for dating the south pole-aitken basin through impact-melt rock samples |
publishDate |
2016 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20160013272 |
op_coverage |
Unclassified, Unlimited, Publicly available |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-44.516,-44.516,-60.733,-60.733) |
geographic |
Aitken South Pole |
geographic_facet |
Aitken South Pole |
genre |
South pole |
genre_facet |
South pole |
op_source |
CASI |
op_relation |
Document ID: 20160013272 http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20160013272 |
op_rights |
No Copyright |
_version_ |
1766201451549294592 |