Abstract
The exploration of mafic anomaly in South Pole-Aitken (SPA, the largest confirmed) basin on the Moon provides important insights into lunar interior. The landing of Chang’e-4 (CE-4) and deployment of Yutu-2 rover on the discontinuous ejecta from Finsen crater enabled in-situ measurements of the unusual mineralogy in the central portion of SPA basin with visible and near-infrared imaging spectrometer (VNIS). Here we present detailed processing procedures based on the level 2B data of CE-4 VNIS and preliminary mineralogical results at the exploration area of Yutu-2 rover. A systematic processing pipeline is developed to derive credible reflectance spectra, based on which several spectral and mineral indices are calculated to constrain the mafic mineralogy. The mafic components in the soils and boulder around CE-4 landing site are concluded as clinopyroxene-bearing with intermediate composition and probably dominated by pigeonite although the possibility of mixing orthopyroxen (OPX) and calcic clinopyroxene (CPX) also exists. These mineralogical results are more consistent with a petrogenesis that the CE-4 regolith and rock fragment are derived from rapid-cooling magmatic systems and we interpret that the materials at the CE-4 landing site ejected from Finsen crater are probably recrystallized from impact melt settings.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11941001, 41972322, U1931211), Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (Grant No. ZR2019MD008), Qilu Young Scholar (TANG SCHOLAR) Program of Shandong University, Weihai (Grant No. 2015WHWLJH14), Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. QYZDY-SSW-DQC028), and Pre-research Project on Civil Aerospace Technologies Funded by China National Space Administration (CNSA) (Grant No. D020102).
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Chen, J., Ling, Z., Qiao, L. et al. Mineralogy of Chang’e-4 landing site: preliminary results of visible and near-infrared imaging spectrometer. Sci. China Inf. Sci. 63, 140903 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-019-2768-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-019-2768-1