Identification of Potential Mantle Rocks Around the Lunar Imbrium Basin

Abstract

Basin-forming impacts expose material from deep within the interior of the Moon. Given the number of lunar basins, one would expect to find samples of the lunar mantle among those returned by the Apollo or Luna missions or within the lunar meteorite collection. However, only a few candidate mantle samples have been identified. Some remotely detected locations have been postulated to contain mantle-derived material, but none are mineralogically consistent upon study with multiple techniques. To locate potential remnants of the lunar mantle, we searched for early-crystallizing minerals using data from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) and the Diviner Lunar Radiometer (Diviner). While the lunar crust is largely composed of plagioclase, the mantle should contain almost none. M3 spectra were used to identify massifs bearing mafic minerals and Diviner was used to constrain the relative abundance of plagioclase. Of the sites analyzed, only Mons Wolff was found to potentially contain mantle material.