Delineating the major KREEP-bearing terranes on the moon with global measurements of absolute thorium abundances

The Lunar Prospector (LP) Gamma-Ray Spectrometer (GRS) has been used to map the global composition of thorium on the lunar surface. Previous LP results of relative thorium abundances demonstrated that thorium is highly concentrated in and around the nearside western maria and less so in the South Po...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lawrence, D. J., Feldman, W. C., Barraclough, B. L., Elphic, R. C., Prettyman, T. H., Binder, A. B., Maurice, S., Miller, M. C.
Other Authors: United States. Department of Energy.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Los Alamos National Laboratory 1999
Subjects:
Thorium
Abundance
Chemical Composition
Mapping
Moon
66 Physics
Gamma Spectrometers
Aitken
South Pole
South pole
Online Access:https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc685315/
Description
Summary:The Lunar Prospector (LP) Gamma-Ray Spectrometer (GRS) has been used to map the global composition of thorium on the lunar surface. Previous LP results of relative thorium abundances demonstrated that thorium is highly concentrated in and around the nearside western maria and less so in the South Pole Aitken (SPA) basin. Using new detector modeling results and a larger data set, the authors present here a global map of absolute thorium abundances on a 2{degree} by 2{degree} equal-area pixel scale. Because thorium is a tracer of KREEP-rich material, these data provide fundamental information regarding the locations and importance of terranes that are rich in KREEP bearing materials.

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