Abstract
China's Chang'e-6 (CE-6) mission has returned the first-ever lunar farside samples from a mare plain on the southern Apollo basin floor. The crater statistics of the CE-6 mare unit and the provenance of the samples are crucial in interpreting the CE-6 sample analysis results and re-calibrating the crater chronology function. Here, we conduct a thorough survey of the formation sequence and main source craters of ejecta materials at the sampling area. Our results show that the sampling mare unit has a model age of ∼2.8 Ga and the CE-6 scooped and drilled samples mainly come from the proximal ejecta of nearby small craters and the local regolith. The total abundance of foreign (non-mare) materials, primarily from Chaffee S and Vavilov craters, is ∼9.3%. The Chaffee S ejecta may contain lunar upper mantle materials previously excavated by the South Pole-Aitken impact, which will shed light on the materials of the Moon's interior.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e2024GL111311 |
| Journal | Geophysical Research Letters |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue number | 24 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 28 Dec 2024 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- CE-6 samples
- Moon
- composition
- crater dating
- ejecta
- regolith
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