Chandrayaan-3 APXS elemental abundance measurements at lunar high latitude

• Published in: Nature (London) 2024-09, Vol.633 (8029), p.327-331
• Main Authors: Vadawale, Santosh V., Mithun, N. P. S., Shanmugam, M., Basu Sarbadhikari, Amit, Sinha, Rishitosh K., Bhatt, Megha, Vijayan, S., Srivastava, Neeraj, Shukla, Anil D., Murty, S. V. S., Bhardwaj, Anil, Acharya, Y. B., Patel, Arpit R., Adalaja, Hiteshkumar L., Vaishnava, C. S., Saiguhan, B. S. Bharath, Singh, Nishant, Kumar, Sushil, Painkra, Deepak Kumar, Srivastava, Yash, Nair, Varsha M., Ladiya, Tinkal, Goyal, Shiv Kumar, Tiwari, Neeraj K., Narendranath, Shyama, Pillai, Netra S., Hait, Arup Kumar, Patinge, Aaditya, Kumar, Abhishek, Satya, Neeraj, Subramanian, Vivek R., Navle, Sonal G., Venkatesh, R. G., Abraham, Lalitha, Suresh, K., Amitabh
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 639/33/445/209; 639/33/445/847; Abundance; Alpha particles; Alpha rays; Anorthosite; Chemical composition; Crystallization; Equatorial regions; Humanities and Social Sciences; Hypotheses; In situ measurement; Landing sites; Latitude; Lunar evolution; Lunar exploration; Lunar landing; Lunar meteorites; Lunar regolith; Lunar surface; Magma; Magnesium; Meteors & meteorites; Moon; multidisciplinary; Regolith; Remote sensing; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Space missions; X ray spectrometers
• ISSN: 0028-0836; 1476-4687; 1476-4687
• DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07870-7

The elemental composition of the lunar surface provides insights into mechanisms of the formation and evolution of the Moon 1 , 2 . The chemical composition of lunar regolith have so far been precisely measured using the samples collected by the Apollo, Luna and Chang’e 5 missions, which are from equatorial to mid-latitude regions 3 , 4 ; lunar meteorites, whose location of origin on the Moon is unknown 5 , 6 ; and the in situ measurement from the Chang’e 3 and Chang’e 4 missions 7 – 9 , which are from the mid-latitude regions of the Moon. Here we report the first in situ measurements of the elemental abundances in the lunar southern high-latitude regions by the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) experiment 10 aboard the Pragyan rover of India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission. The 23 measurements in the vicinity of the Chandrayaan-3 landing site show that the local lunar terrain in this region is fairly uniform and primarily composed of ferroan anorthosite (FAN), a product of the lunar magma ocean (LMO) crystallization. However, observation of relatively higher magnesium abundance with respect to calcium in APXS measurements suggests the mixing of further mafic material. The compositional uniformity over a few tens of metres around the Chandrayaan-3 landing site provides an excellent ground truth for remote-sensing observations. In situ measurements of the elemental abundances in the lunar southern high-latitude regions show that the local terrain is fairly uniform and mostly composed of ferroan anorthosite, a product of lunar magma ocean crystallization.