Zhang, L.; Liu, J.; Michael, G.; Ge, P.; Di, K.; Wu, C.; Zhu, K.; Kang, X. Surface Ages in the Vicinity of the Chang’e-6 Landing Site. Preprints2024, 2024090030. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202409.0030.v1
APA Style
Zhang, L., Liu, J., Michael, G., Ge, P., Di, K., Wu, C., Zhu, K., & Kang, X. (2024). Surface Ages in the Vicinity of the Chang’e-6 Landing Site. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202409.0030.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Zhang, L., Kai Zhu and Xiaoxi Kang. 2024 "Surface Ages in the Vicinity of the Chang’e-6 Landing Site" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202409.0030.v1
Abstract
The samples from lunar farside have great significance for the study of the Moon, and even the solar system. Chang’e-6 landed successfully on the southern mare of the Apollo basin and returned ~2 kg samples from lunar farside. To provide a better understanding for the background of the returned samples, we conducted detailed crater size-frequency distribution (CSFD) measurements in the Chang’e-6 landing region, the southern mare of the Apollo basin. The southern mare is divided into western mare (W region) and eastern mare (E region), and then subdivided into five sub-units (W1, W2, W3, W4, W5) and three units (E1, E2, E3), respectively, according to the elevation, Ti and Fe abundances. Within the W2 and W5 region, more detailed sub-units were divided. The results show that the southern mare generally have two epochs, one of the Imbrian period and the other of the Eratothenian period. The basalt eruption lasted for ~1.7 Ga, from 3.28 Ga of the eastern mare to 1.54 Ga of the western mare. W region is younger than E region, while the three units of E region has an age of ~3.2 Ga. The ages of the western mare basalts range from 2.98 Ga to 1.54 Ga, lasting for 1.4 Ga. It’s worth noting that the age of the basalt at the Chang’e-6 sampling site is ~1.68 Ga, indicating the samples returned may include components with this very young age.
Keywords
Chang’e-6; CSFD measurements; absolute model age; Apollo basin
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Geology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
