Petrological and Mineralogical Characteristics of Exposed Materials on the Floors of the Lavoisier and Surrounding Craters

Abstract

Five floor-fractured craters (FFCs), Lavoisier crater and four craters surrounding it (Lavoisier C, Lavoisier E, Lavoisier F, and Lavoisier H), are distributed along the boundary between the northwestern part of the Oceanus Procellarum and the highlands. This study examines the uplifted or exposed materials on the fractured floors of these five impact craters using petrological, mineralogical, and morphological analyses. We inferred the processes that uplifted or exposed the materials from the subsurface to the crater floor using the Chandrayaan-1 Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) level 1b (thermally and topographically corrected spectral radiance) data and level 2 (spectral reflectance) data. The elemental abundances, petrological, and mineralogical characteristics of the study regions were mapped. We confirm that mare basalts and dark mantle deposits exist on the floors of these five craters. These two materials (mare basalts and dark mantle deposits) were used to identify minerals exposed on the floor surface of craters using spectral reflectance spectra. Two mineral groups were identified: pigeonite (or orthopyroxene in norite (low-Ca pyroxene) occurred in the craters Lavoisier, Lavoisier F, and Lavoisier H, and subcalcic augite (high-Ca pyroxene) occurs in the craters Lavoisier C and E. Our approach demonstrates that the characterization of uplifted or exposed surface minerals using elemental maps, spectral parameter composite maps, and reflectance spectra can provide information critical for prospective studies involving lunar geology and in situ resource utilization.

Keywords

• the Moon
• mare basalt
• Mg-suite rock
• floor-fractured crater
• petrological analysis
• mineralogical analysis