1 National Aeronautics and Space Administration Education Product Teachers Grades 4 12 a Teacher s Guide with activities for Earth and Space Sciences
2 a Teacher s Guide with activities for Earth and Space Sciences National Aeronautics and Space Administration Office of Human Resources and Education Education Division Office of Space Science Solar System Exploration Division This Publication is in the Public Domain and is not copyrighted. Permission is not required for duplication. November 1997 EG HQ
3 my notes G. Jeffrey Taylor Project Coordinator Professor Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology University of Hawai'i at Manoa Linda M.V. Martel Managing Editor Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology University of Hawai'i at Manoa Brooks G. Bays, Jr. Designer Publication Services School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology University of Hawai'i at Manoa ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The activities were tested by teachers in classrooms throughout the state of Hawai'i. We thank many individuals in the Oklahoma State University Aerospace Education Services Program and at NASA Headquarters for their useful reviews of the materials. We especially thank Pam Bacon and Greg Vogt for all their help and encouragement. We also thank the Challenger Center for allowing a modification of the Marsville activity on life support systems for use in this book. Second edition revisions were supported by the Hawai'i Space Grant Consortium. About the cover Our knowledge and concepts of the Moon change over time as depicted by the three images. A map of the Moon (circa 1700s) is overlaid by an Apollo 11 astronaut footprint (NASA photo AS ) and a NASA painting of a future lunar habitation module by Pat Rawlings of Science Applications International Corporation. The following people contributed the activities in this book. Kathy Chock Hawai'i Department of Education Pauline Higa Mililani High School Art Kimura Future Flight Hawai'i Forrest Luke Leilehua High School Linda Martel University of Hawai'i Dale Olive Waiakea High School Kevin Polk University of Hawai'i Randolph Scoville Highlands Intermediate School Liza Shigeta Kobayashi Waiakea High School Cheryl Shintani Koloa Elementary School Nancy Tashima Astronaut Ellison S. Onizuka Space Center Jeff Taylor University of Hawai'i Arlene Yoshimura Mililani Mauka Elementary School i
4 Table of Contents About This Book iii About the Lunar Sample Disk iv About the Slide Set v Activity Matrices vi Teacher's Guide -- The Moon: Gateway to the Solar System 1 Moon ABCs Fact Sheet 17 Rock ABCs Fact Sheet 19 Progress in Lunar Science Chart 20 Nearside of the Moon--Apollo Landing Sites 21 Unit 1 Pre-Apollo 23 Resource Section for Unit 1 24 Distance to the Moon 25 Diameter of the Moon 29 Reaping Rocks 33 Unit 2 Learning From Apollo 37 Resource Section for Unit 2 38 The Lunar Disk 39 Apollo Landing Sites 43 Regolith Formation 47 Lunar Surface 53 Differentiation 57 Impact Craters 61 Clay Lava Flows 71 Lava Layering 77 Lunar Landing Sites 83 Lunar Roving Vehicle 87 Moon Anomalies 91 Unit 3 The Future 99 Resource Section for Unit Lunar Land Use 101 Life Support Systems 109 Lunar Biospheres 129 Glossary 141 Resources for Educators 145 ii
5 About this Book These materials have been designed for use in upper elementary through high schools especially, but not exclusively, with the Lunar Sample Disk. See Page iv. This book contains: information on the Lunar Sample Disk, Activity Matrices -- Skills & Standards, a Teacher s Guide, Moon ABCs Fact Sheet, Rock ABCs Fact Sheet, Progress in Lunar Science Chart, 17 activities, Resource Section for each unit, Glossary, NASA Educational Resources. The Teacher s Guide titled The Moon: Gateway to the Solar System, pages 1-16, provides background information about the Moon. It tells the story of the Moon s geological history and how scientists try to decipher the story. This background information may be useful reading for students as well. Key facts about the Moon appear on the Moon ABCs and Rock ABCs pages. These pages were named to emphasize the basic nature of the information. The Progress in Lunar Science Chart summarizes our knowledge about the Moon from 1959 to The activities are divided into three units: Pre-Apollo, Learning from Apollo, and the Future. These correspond, at least roughly, to exercises that can be done before the Lunar Sample Disk arrives at your school (Pre-Apollo), while it is there (Learning from Apollo), and after it has been returned to NASA (The Future). The length of time needed to complete an activity will vary according to the degree of difficulty and the development level of the students. Thus activities may take one to eight or more class periods. Activity Matrices are provided to assist in identifying the science process skills and science and mathematics educational standards associated with each activity. Classroom activities promote problemsolving, communication skills, and teamwork. Each activity consists of teacher pages and reproducible student sheets. Teacher pages begin with a statement of purpose and background information with answers specific to the activity. Relevant pages in the Teacher's Guide also are listed. These are followed by sections on preparation, in-class suggestions, wrap-up ideas, and extensions. Words that are bolded appear in the Glossary. Student sheets include a purpose statement, key words, list of materials, procedure, questions with space provided for answers, and charts. Key words are included in the Glossary. Materials for each activity are listed in order of use. They are bolded in the text of the procedure section as a memory aid for students. A note on measurements: These activities use metric units of measure with the few exceptions when English units are used to describe items from the material lists such as pans or measuring cups. iii
6 About the Lunar Sample Disk Legacy of Apollo The collection of rocks and regolith from the Moon is a tangible legacy of the U.S. Apollo Space Program. NASA makes a small portion of this extraterrestrial material available for classroom use through the Lunar Sample Loan Program. Lunar Sample Loan Program Six samples of rocks and regolith are embedded in a 15-cm diameter plastic disk. Disks are sent via registered mail to educators for one- to two-week loan periods. The package also includes this book Exploring the Moon, an annotated slide set of lunar images (described more fully on Page v), and a collection of color photographs and descriptions of the six samples. How to Schedule a Disk Educators must first be certified to borrow lunar material by attending a training seminar on security requirements and proper handling procedures. This is the same certification as for borrowing the Meteorite Sample Disk. Then a written request must be sent to a NASA Educator Resource Center at least one month prior to the requested loan date. Contact the NASA Educator Resource Center that serves your geographic area for more information on certification seminars and request procedures (refer to Page 146 of this book for addresses and phone numbers.) Ninth grade science students from Waipahu High School, Hawai'i view the Lunar Sample Disk as part of an activity from Exploring the Moon. iv
7 The Collection A set of thirty-six 35-mm slides has been assembled to complement the activities in this book Exploring the Moon. Each slide is accompanied by detailed captions. Topics include what we knew about the Moon from telescopic and other astronomic observations before Apollo, Apollo missions, astronaut activities on the lunar surface, the Highlands, the Maria, how the Moon formed, and exciting ideas for future explorations. About the Slide Set How to Obtain a Copy It is easy to obtain a copy of the slides. They are available from the Central Operation of Resources for Educators (CORE) in Ohio or from NASA Educator Resource Centers. Phone calls are welcome if you are unable to visit the Educator Resource Center that serves your geographic area. Please refer to Page 146 in this book for addresses and phone numbers for CORE and Educator Resource Centers. basalt sample rake samples Apollo 15 site v
8 Activity Matrix Science Process Skills Unit 1 Pre- Apollo Unit 2 Learning From Apollo Distance to the Moon Diameter of the Moon Reaping Rocks The Lunar Disk Apollo Landing Sites Regolith Formation Lunar Surface Differentiation Impact Craters Clay Lava Flows Lava Layering Lunar Landing Sites Lunar Roving Vehicle Moon Anomalies Unit 3 Future Lunar Land Use Life Support Systems Lunar Biosphere vi
9 Activity Matrix Science Standards Unit 1 Pre- Apollo Unit 2 Learning From Apollo Distance to the Moon Diameter of the Moon Reaping Rocks The Lunar Disk Apollo Landing Sites Regolith Formation Lunar Surface Differentiation Impact Craters Clay Lava Flows Lava Layering Lunar Landing Sites Lunar Roving Vehicle Moon Anomalies Unit 3 Future Lunar Land Use Life Support Systems Lunar Biosphere vii
10 Activity Matrix Mathematics Standards Unit 1 Pre- Apollo Unit 2 Learning From Apollo Distance to the Moon Diameter of the Moon Reaping Rocks The Lunar Disk Apollo Landing Sites Regolith Formation Lunar Surface Differentiation Impact Craters Clay Lava Flows Lava Layering Lunar Landing Sites Lunar Roving Vehicle Moon Anomalies Unit 3 Future Lunar Land Use Life Support Systems Lunar Biosphere viii
11 Teacher s Guide THE MOON GATEWAY TO THE SOLAR SYSTEM G. Jeffrey Taylor, PhD WHEN ASTRONAUTS dug into the Moon s surface during the Apollo program, they were doing more than digging up dry, dark sediment. They were time travelers. The rocks and sediment returned by Apollo contain vital clues to how Earth and the Moon formed, the nature and timing of early melting, the intensity of impact bombardment and its variation with time, and even the history of the Sun. Most of this information, crucial parts of the story of planet Earth, cannot be learned by studying rocks on Earth because our planet is so geologically active that it has erased much of the record. The clues have been lost in billions of years of mountain building, volcanism, weathering, and erosion. Colliding tectonic plates The Moon, front and back The top right photograph is a telescopic image of the Earth-facing half of the Moon obtained at Lick Observatory in California. The one below right was taken during the Apollo 16 mission and shows mostly the farside, except for the dark areas on the left, which can be seen, though barely, from Earth. The two major types of terrain are clearly visible. The highlands, which are especially well displayed in the photograph of the farside, are light-colored and heavily cratered. The maria are darker and smoother; they formed when lava flows filled depressions. One of the mysteries about the Moon is why fewer maria occur on the farside than nearside. Note how many craters stand shoulder to shoulder on the farside. These immense holes chronicle the Moon s early bombardment, an intense barrage that probably affected the early Earth as well. 1
12 and falling rain have erased much of Earth history, especially the early years before four billion years ago. The Moon was geologically active in its heyday, producing a fascinating array of products, but its geologic engine was not vigorous and all records of early events were not lost. Its secrets are recorded in its craters, plains, and rocks. This guide reveals the secrets that lunar scientists have uncovered since the Apollo missions returned 382 kilograms (843 pounds) of rock and sediment from the lovely body that graces the night sky. The emphasis here is on geology. The samples returned by Apollo are the stars of the show. [See the Lunar Disk activity on Pages and the Apollo Landing Sites activity on Pages ] Understanding the Moon, however, requires other geological approaches, such as geological mapping from high-quality photographs, the study of analogous features on Earth (for instance, impact craters), and experiments in laboratories. THE LUNAR LANDSCAPE The Moon is not like Earth. It does not have oceans, lakes, rivers, or streams. It does not have wind-blown ice fields at its poles. Roses and morning glories do not sprout from its charcoal gray, dusty surface. Redwoods do not tower above its cratered ground. Dinosaur foot prints cannot be found. Paramecium never conjugated, amoeba never split, and dogs never barked. The wind never blew. People never lived there but they have wondered about it for centuries, and a few lucky ones have even visited it. Highlands and lowlands The major features of the Moon s surface can be seen by just looking up at it. It has lighter and darker areas. These distinctive terrains are the bright lunar highlands (also known as the lunar terrae, which is Latin for land ) and the darker plains called the lunar maria, Latin for seas, which they resembled to Thomas Hariot and Galileo Galilei, the first scientists to examine the Moon with telescopes. The names terrae and maria were given to lunar terrains by Hariot and Galileo s contemporary, Johannes Kepler. In fact, the idea that the highlands and maria correspond to lands and seas appears to have been popular among ancient Greeks long before telescopes were invented. Although we now know they are not seas (the Moon never had any water), we still use the term maria, and its singular form, mare. The highlands and craters Closer inspection shows that the highlands comprise countless overlapping craters, ranging in size from the smallest visible in photographs (1 meter on the best Apollo photographs) to more than 1000 km. Essentially all of these craters formed when meteorites crashed into the Moon. Before either robotic or piloted spacecraft went to the Moon, many scientists thought that most lunar craters were volcanic in origin. But as we found out more about the nature of lunar craters and studied impact craters on Earth, it became clear that the Moon has been bombarded by cosmic projectiles. The samples returned by the Apollo missions confirmed the pervasive role impact processes play in shaping the lunar landscape. The term meteorite impact is used to describe the process of surface bombardment by cosmic object. The objects themselves are variously referred to as impactors or projectiles. The impact process is explosive. A large impactor does not simply bore its way into a planet s surface. When it hits, it is moving extremely fast, more than 20 km/sec (70,000 km/hour). This meeting is not tender. High-pressure waves are sent back into the impactor and into the target planet. The impactor is so overwhelmed by the passage of the shock wave that almost all of it vaporizes, never to be seen again. The target material is compressed strongly, then decompressed. A little is vaporized, some melted, but most (a mass of about 10,000 times the mass of the impactor) is tossed out of the target area, piling up around the hole so produced. The bottom of the crater is lower than the original ground surface, the piled up material on the rim is higher. This is the characteristic shape of an impact crater and is different from volcanic calderas (no piled up materials) or cinder cones (the central pit is above the original ground surface). A small amount of the target is also tossed great distances along arcuate paths called rays. Real impacts cannot be readily simulated in a classroom. In fact, there are very few facilities where we can simulate high-velocity impacts. Nevertheless, classroom experiments using marbles, ball bearings, or other objects can still illustrate many important 2
13 points about the impact process. For example, objects impacting at a variety of velocities (hence kinetic energies) produce craters with a variety of sizes; the more energy, the larger the crater. [See the Impact Craters activity on Pages ] The maria The maria cover 16% of the lunar surface and are composed of lava flows that filled relatively low places, mostly inside immense impact basins. So, although the Moon does not have many volcanic craters, it did experience volcanic activity. Close examination of the relationships between the highlands and the maria shows that this activity took place after the highlands formed and after most of the cratering took place. Thus, the maria are younger than the highlands. [See the Clay Lava Flows activity on Pages and the Lava Layering activity on Pages ] How do we know that the dark plains are covered with lava flows? Why not some other kind of rock? Even before the Apollo missions brought back samples from the maria, there were strong suspicions that the plains were volcanic. They contain some features that look very much like lava flows. Other features resemble lava channels, which form in some types of lava flows on Earth. Still other features resemble collapses along underground volcanic features called lava tubes. These and other features convinced most lunar scientists before the Apollo missions that the maria features. were lava plains. This insight was confirmed by samples collected from the maria: they are a type of volcanic rock called basalt. The maria fill many of the gigantic impact basins that decorate the Moon s nearside. (The Moon keeps the same hemisphere towards Earth because Earth s gravity has locked in the Moon s rotation.) Some scientists contended during the 1960s that this demonstrated a cause and effect: impact caused not only the formation of a large crater but led to melting of the lunar interior as well. Thus, it was argued, the impacts triggered the volcanism. However, careful geo- Rivers or lava channels? The origin of river-like valleys, called rilles, was debated before the Apollo 15 mission visited one of them, Hadley Rille, shown here from orbit (white arrow shows the landing site) and from the lunar surface. Some scientists argued that rilles were river valleys, implying that the Moon had flowing water at one time. Others thought that rilles resembled the channels that form in lava flows. Observations by the Apollo 15 crew and samples returned settled the argument: rilles are volcanic logic mapping using high-quality telescopic images, showed that the mare must be considerably younger than the basins in which they reside. For example, the impact that formed the large Imbrium basin (the Man-in-the-Moon s right eye) hurled material outwards and sculpted the mountains surrounding the Serenitatis basin (the left eye); thus, Serenitatis must be older. The Serenitatis basin is also home to Mare Serenitatis. If the lavas in Mare Serentatis formed when the basin did, they ought to show the effects of the giant impact that formed Imbrium. They show no 3
14 Maria mysteries Lava flows dribbling across Mare Imbrium Long lava flows (lower left to upper right through center of photo) in Mare Imbrium. The flows are up to 400 kilometers long (the entire extent is not shown in this Apollo photograph) and have 30-meter high cliffs at their margins. The ridges running roughly perpendicular to the flows are called wrinkle ridges. The ridges formed after the flows because they did not impede the advance of the lava flow. The smooth plains surrounding the prominent lava flows are also lava, but older, so the margins are harder to see. The craters on the right along the ridge are about 5 kilometers in diameter. signs of it. Furthermore, the maria contain far fewer craters than do basin deposits, hence have been around a shorter time (the older the surface, the greater the number of craters). The Apollo samples, of course, confirmed these astute geological observations and showed that the maria filling some basins formed a billion years after the basin formed. One other type of deposit associated with the maria, though it blankets highlands areas as well, is known as dark mantle deposits. They cannot be seen except with telescopes or from spacecraft near the Moon, but are important nonetheless. Before Apollo, most scientists believed that the dark mantle deposits were formed by explosive volcanic eruptions known as pyroclastic eruptions (literally, pieces of fire ). Some deposits seemed to be associated with low, broad, dark cinder cones, consistent with the idea that they were formed by pyroclastic eruptions this is how cinder cones form on Earth. This bit of geologic deduction was proven by the Apollo 17 mission and its sampling of the orange soil, a collection of tiny glass droplets like those found in terrestrial pyroclastic eruptions. Some mysteries persist about the maria. For one, why are volcanoes missing except for the cinder cones associated with dark mantle deposits? Second, if no obvious volcanoes exist, where did the lavas erupt from? In some cases, we can see that lava emerged from the margins of enormous impact basins, perhaps along cracks concentric to the basin. But in most cases, we cannot see the places where the lava erupted. Another curious feature is that almost all the maria occur on the Earth-facing side of the Moon. Most scientists guess that this asymmetry is caused by the highlands crust being thicker on the lunar farside, making it difficult for basalts to make it all the way through to the surface. [See the Moon Anomalies activity on Pages ] THE DUSTY LUNAR SURFACE Some visitors to Kilauea Volcano, Hawai i, have been overheard to say, upon seeing a vast landscape covered with fresh lava, It looks just like the Moon. Well, it doesn t. The fresh lava flows of Kilauea and other active volcanoes are usually dark grayish and barren like the Moon, but the resemblance ends there. The lunar surface is charcoal gray and sandy, with a sizable supply of fine sediment. Meteorite impacts over billions of years have ground up the formerly fresh surfaces into powder. Because the Moon has virtually no atmosphere, even the tiniest meteorite strikes a defenseless surface at its full cosmic velocity, at least 20 km/sec. Some rocks lie strewn about the surface, resembling boulders sticking up through fresh snow on the slopes of Aspen or Vail. Even these boulders won t last long, maybe a few hundred million years, before they are ground up into powder by the relentless rain of high-speed projectiles. Of course, an occasional larger impactor arrives, say the size of a car, and excavates fresh rock from beneath the blanket of powdery sediment. The meteoritic rain then begins to grind the fresh boulders down, slowly but inevitably. The powdery blanket that covers the Moon is called the lunar regolith, a term for mechanically produced debris layers on planetary surfaces. Many scientists also call it the lunar soil, but it contains none of the organic matter that occurs in soils on Earth. Some people use the term sediment for 4
15 regolith. Be forewarned that the regolith samples in the Lunar Sample Disk are labeled soil. Although it is everywhere, the regolith is thin, ranging from about two meters on the youngest maria to perhaps 20 meters in the oldest surfaces in the highlands. [See the Regolith Formation activity on Pages ] Lunar regolith is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it has mixed local material so that a shovelful contains most of the rock types that occur in an area. It even contains some rock fragments tossed in by impacts in remote regions. Thus, the regolith is a great rock collection. It also contains the record of impacts during the past several hundred million to a billion years, crucial information for understanding the rate of impact on Earth during that time. On the other hand, this impact record is not written very clearly and we have not come close to figuring it out as yet. The blanket of regolith also greatly obscures the details of the bedrock geology. This made field work during Apollo difficult and hinders our understanding of lunar history. The regolith consists of what you d expect from an impact-generated pile of debris. It contains rock and mineral fragments derived from the original bedrock. It also contains glassy particles formed by the impacts. In many lunar regoliths, half of the particles are composed of mineral fragments that are bound together by impact glass; scientists call these objects agglutinates. The chemical composition of the regolith reflects the composition of the bedrock underneath. Regolith in the highlands is rich in aluminum, as are highland rocks. Regolith in the maria is rich in iron and magnesium, major constituents of basalt. A little bit of mixing from beneath basalt layers or from distant highland locales occurs, but not enough to obscure the basic difference between the highlands and the maria. Raking moon dirt One of the most useful ways of obtaining samples of Moon rocks was to drag a rake through the regolith. This allowed rock fragments larger than about one centimeter to remain on tines of the rake, while smaller fragments fell through. Note the large range in the sizes of rock fragments. One large boulder lies near the rake, a medium-sized one is visible between the astronaut s feet, along with countless other pebbles. Most of the regolith is smaller than fine sand. The astronaut s footprints are distinct because the regolith is composed of a large percentage of tiny particles (about 20% is smaller than 0.02 millimeters). A geologist-astronaut does field work on the Moon Geologist Harrison H. Schmitt examines a large rock at the Apollo 17 landing site. This large boulder contains numerous rock fragments that were smashed together by the huge impact event that made the 750-kilometer Serentatis basin on the Moon. 5
16 One of the great potential bits of information stored in the complex pile atop the lunar surface is the history of the Sun. The nearest star puts out prodigious amounts of particles called the solar wind. Composed mostly of hydrogen, helium, neon, carbon, and nitrogen, the solar wind particles strike the lunar surface and are implanted into mineral grains. The amounts build up with time. In principle, we can determine if conditions inside the Sun have changed over time by analyzing these solar wind products, especially the isotopic composition of them. The same solar wind gases may prove useful when people establish permanent settlements on the Moon. Life support systems require the life-giving elements: hydrogen and oxygen (for water), carbon, and nitrogen. Plenty of oxygen is bound in the silicate, minerals of lunar rocks (about 50% by volume) and the solar wind provided the rest. So, when the astronauts were digging up lunar regolith for return to Earth, they were not merely sampling they were prospecting! MOON ROCKS Geologists learn an amazing amount about a planet by examining photographs and using other types of remotely sensed data, but eventually they need to collect some samples. For example, although geologists determined unambigously from photographs that the maria are younger than the highlands, they did not know their absolute age, the age in years. Rocks also provide key tests to hypotheses. For instance, the maria were thought to be covered with lava flows, but we did not know for sure until we collected samples from them. Also, no method can accurately determine the chemical and mineralogical composition of a rock except laboratory analysis. Most important, samples provide surprises, telling us things we never expected. The highlands provide the best example of a geological surprise, and one with great consequences for our understanding of what Earth was like 4.5 billion years ago. A fist-sized piece of the original lunar crust This rock sample was collected during the Apollo 15 mission. It is an anorthosite, a rock composed of little else but the mineral feldspar. Anorthosites formed from the enormous magma system, the lunar magma ocean, that surrounded the newly formed Moon. Because of its importance in understanding the origin of the Moon s crust, the rock was nicknamed the genesis rock. Smash and mix, mix and melt This rock returned by the Apollo 16 mission attests to the effects of impacts on a planet s crust. It is a hodgepodge of rock and mineral fragments, some of which themselves are complicated mishmashes of rock debris. Geologists call these complicated rocks breccias. 6
17 Highland rocks, the lunar magma ocean, and maybe a cataclysm Strange as it may seem, the first highland rocks were collected during the first lunar landing, the Apollo 11 mission, which landed on a mare, Mare Tranquillitatis. Although most of the rocks collected were, indeed, basalts, some millimeter-sized rock fragments were quite different. They were composed chiefly of the mineral plagioclase feldspar; some fragments were composed of nothing but plagioclase. [See the Rock ABCs Fact Sheet on Page 19.] Such rocks are called anorthosites. Some scientists suggested that these fragments were blasted to the Apollo 11 landing site by distant impacts on highland terrain. Thus, they argued, the highlands are loaded with plagioclase. This was a bold extrapolation confirmed by subsequent Apollo missions to highland sites. But this was not enough for some scientists. If the highlands are enriched in plagioclase, how did they get that way? One way is to accumulate it by flotation in a magma (molten rock). This happens in thick subterranean magma bodies on Earth. So, plagioclase floated in a magma. But if ALL the lunar highlands are enriched in plagioclase, then the magma must have been all over the Moon. The early Moon must have been covered by a global ocean of magma, now commonly referred to as the lunar magma ocean. Although some scientists still remain unconvinced about the veracity of the magma ocean hypothesis, nothing we have learned since has contradicted the idea that 4.5 billion years ago the Moon was covered by a layer of magma hundreds of kilometers thick. The idea has been extended to the young Earth as well, and even to Mars and some asteroids. And all this sprung forth because creative and bold scientists saw special importance in a few dozen white fragments of anorthosite strewn about in a pile of charcoal gray lunar regolith. The magma ocean concept was tested by the 1994 U. S. Clementine Mission to the Moon. Clementine was in a pole-to-pole orbit for two months, during which it took thousands of photographs in several wavelengths. Scientists at the University of Hawai'i developed a method to determine the iron content of the lunar surface from ratioes of the intensity of light reflected in different wavelengths. The magma ocean hypothesis predicts that the lunar highlands should have low iron contents, less than about 5 wt. % (when recorded as iron oxide, FeO). According to Clementine measurements, the highlands average slightly under 5 wt. % FeO, consistent with the magma ocean idea. Further refinement of this test is underway using data from Clementine and the forthcoming U. S. Lunar Prospector Mission, scheduled for launch in early The highlands also contain other types of igneous rocks. The most abundant are called norites and troctolites, rocks composed of equal amounts of plagioclase and either olivine or pyroxene (both silicate minerals containing iron and magnesium). Age dating suggests that these rocks are slightly younger than the anorthosites and formed after the magma ocean had crystallized. Highland rocks are difficult to work with because all that cratering, so evident in photographs of the highlands, has taken its toll on the rocks. Most highland rocks are complex mixtures of other rocks. The original igneous rocks have been melted, mixed, smashed, and generally abused by impacts during the Moon s first half billion years. We call these complicated rocks breccias. Some are so mixed up that they contain breccias within breccias within breccias. Most of the anorthosites, norites, and troctolites are actually rock fragments inside breccias. Separating them out is painstaking work. An interesting thing about highland breccias, especially those we call impact melt breccias (rocks partly melted by an impact event), is that most of them fall into a relatively narrow span of ages, from about 3.85 to 4.0 billion years. This has led some scientists to propose (boldly again lunar scientists don t seem to be timid!) that the Moon was 7
18 bombarded with exceptional intensity during that narrow time interval. If it happened, it probably affected Earth as well, perhaps leading to production of the first sedimentary basins, and possibly inhibiting the formation of the first life on this planet or harming whatever life had developed by four billion years ago. This idea of a cataclysmic bombardment of the Moon is not yet proven. It could be that the apparent clustering in rock ages reflects poor sampling we may only have obtained samples from one or two large impact basins. The idea can be tested by obtaining samples from many more localities on the Moon. potassium (chemical symbol K), rare-earth elements (abbreviated REE), and phosphorus (P). Most Moon specialists believe that KREEP represents the last dregs from the crystallization of the magma ocean. Huge impacts dug down to the lower crust of the Moon and excavated it, mixing it with other debris to form KREEPy breccias. The maria: lava flows and fountains of fire The missions to mare areas brought back lots of samples of basalt. Basalts differ from the highlands rocks in having more olivine and pyroxene, and less Multi-ringed masterpieces The Moon has about 35 multi-ringed, circular impact features larger than 300 km in diameter. The one shown here, the Orientale basin, has three very prominent rings. The diameter of the outer one is 930 km. These immense craters might all have formed in a narrow time interval between 3.85 and 4.0 billion years ago. Scientists do not know for sure how the rings form during the impact. Many highland breccias and a few igneous rocks are enriched compared to other lunar samples in a set of elements not familiar to most of us. The elements are those that tend not to enter the abundant minerals in rocks. The result is that as a magma crystallizes the part that is still liquid becomes progressively richer in these special elements. The rocks that contain them are called KREEP, for A piece of a lava flow This typical sample of a mare basalt is composed mostly of brown pyroxene (grayish in the photo) and white feldspar. The holes in the sample are frozen gas bubbles. Some basalt samples have many such bubbles (called vesicles by geologists), whereas others have none. plagioclase. Many of them also have surprisingly large amounts of an iron-titanium oxide mineral called ilmenite. The first batch had so much ilmenite (and some other related minerals) that they were called high-titanium mare basalts, in honor of the exceptional titanium contents compared to terrestrial basalts. The second mission, Apollo 12, returned basalts with lower titanium concentrations, so they were called low-titanium mare basalts. Subsequent missions, including an automated samplereturn mission sent by the Soviet Union, returned some mare basalts with even lower titanium, so they were dubbed very-low-titanium basalts. Most scientists figure that mare basalts have a complete range in titanium abundance. Data from the U. S. Clementine Mission confirm this, and show that the 8
19 high-titanium basalts are not really very common on the Moon. The shapes of the mineral grains and how they are intergrown in mare basalts indicate that these rocks formed in lava flows, some thin (perhaps a meter thick), others thicker (up to perhaps 30 meters). This is not unusual for basalt flows on Earth. Many lunar mare basalts also contain holes, called vesicles, which were formed by gas bubbles trapped when the lava solidified. Earth basalts also have them. On Earth, the abundant gases escaping from the lava are carbon dioxide and water vapor, accompanied by some sulfur and chlorine gases. We are not as sure what gases escaped from lunar lavas, although we know that water vapor was not one of them because there are no hints for the presence of water or waterbearing minerals in any Moon rock. The best bet is a mixture of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, with some sulfur gases added for good measure. On Earth, when the amount of gas dissolved in magma (the name for lava still underground) becomes large, it escapes violently and causes an explosive eruption. In places such as Hawai i, for example, the lava erupts in large fountains up to several hundred meters high. The lava falls to the ground in small pieces, producing a pyroclastic deposit. This also happened on the Moon, producing the dark mantle deposits. One of these was sampled directly during the Apollo 17 mission. The sample, called the orange soil, consists of numerous small orange glass beads. They are glass because they cooled rapidly, so there was not enough time to form and grow crystals in them. Small samples of pyroclastic glasses were also found at other sites. Some are green, others yellow, still others red. The differences in color reflect the amount of titanium they contain. The green have the least (about 1 weight percent) and the red contain the most (14 weight percent), more than even the highest titanium basalt. Experiments conducted on mare basalts and pyroclastic glasses show that they formed when the interior of the Moon partially melted. (Rocks do not have a single melting temperature like pure substances. Instead they melt over a range of temperatures: C for some basalts, for example.) The experiments also show that the melting took place at depths ranging from 100 to 500 km, and that the rocks that partially melted contained mostly olivine and pyroxene, with some ilmenite in the regions that formed the hightitanium basalts. An involved but sensible chain of reasoning indicates that these deep rocks rich in olivine and pyroxene formed from the lunar magma ocean: while plagioclase floated to form anorthosites in the highlands crust, the denser minerals olivine and pyroxene sank. So, although the anorthosites and mare basalts differ drastically in age and composition, the origins are intimately connected. What s next? Scientists are still working on the bounty returned by the Apollo missions. New analytical techniques and improved understanding of how geological processes work keep the field exciting and vibrant. Eventually we will need additional samples and some extensive field work to fully understand the Moon and how it came to be and continues to evolve. These sampling and field expeditions will probably be done by a combination of robotic and piloted spacecraft. In the meantime, Nature has provided a bonus: samples from the Moon come to us free of charge in the form of lunar meteorites. (See companion volume Exploring Meteorite Mysteries.) Thirteen separate meteorites have been identified so far, one found in Australia and the rest in Antarctica. We are sure that they come from the Moon on the basis of appearance and chemical and isotopic composition, but of course we do not know from where on the Moon they come. These samples have helped support the magma ocean idea. Most important, knowing that meteorites can be delivered to Earth by impacts on the Moon lends credence to the idea that we have some meteorites from Mars. The Martian 9
20 meteorites are collectively called SNC meteorites. If we did not know so much about the Moon we would never have been able to identify meteorites from the Moon, and, therefore, would not have been able to argue as convincingly that some meteorites come from Mars. From the Moon, free of charge The first lunar meteorite discovered in Antarctica hails from the lunar highlands and, like most highlands rocks, it is an impact breccia. The lunar meteorites prove that objects can be blasted off sizable objects without melting them, adding credence to the idea that a group of twelve meteorites comes from Mars. MOONQUAKES, THE MOON S INTERIOR, AND THE MYSTERIOUS MAGNETIC FIELD The Moon does not shake, rattle, and roll as Earth does. Almost all moonquakes are smaller than Earth s constant grumblings. The largest quakes reach only about magnitude 5 (strong enough to cause dishes to fall out of cabinets), and these occur about once a year. This is clear evidence that the Moon is not at present geologically active. No internal motions drive crustal plates as on Earth, or initiate hot spots to give rise to volcanic provinces like Hawai i. This seismic inactivity is a wonderful virtue in the eyes of astronomers. Combined with the lack of an atmosphere to cause stars to twinkle, the low moonquake activity makes the Moon an ideal place to install telescopes. We know about moonquakes from four seis- mometers set up by the Apollo missions. Besides telling us how many and how strong moonquakes are, the data acquired by the Apollo seismic network help us figure out something about the nature of the Moon s interior. On Earth, seismology has allowed us to know that the planet has a thin crust (20-60 km over continents, 8-10 km over ocean basins), a thick silicate mantle (down to 2900 km), and a large metallic iron core (2900 km to the center at 6370 km). The Moon is quite different. The crust is thicker than Earth s continental crust, ranging from 70 km on the Earth-facing side to perhaps 150 km on the farside. The mare basalts represent a thin veneer on this mostly plagioclase-rich crust, averaging only about 1 km in thickness (inferred mostly from photogeological studies). Evidence from samples collected on the rims of the large basins Imbrium and Serentatis and from remote sensing instruments carried onboard two Apollo missions, the Clementine Mission, and the forthcoming Lunar Prospector Mission suggest that the lower crust may not contain as much plagioclase as does the upper half of the crust. Beneath the crust is the lunar mantle, which is the largest part of the Moon. There might be a difference in rock types above and below a depth of 500 km, perhaps representing the depth of the lunar magma ocean. Beneath the mantle lies a small lunar core made of metallic iron. The size of the core is highly uncertain, with estimates ranging from about 100 km to 400 km. That little core is important, though. The Moon does not have much of a magnetic field, so the lunar core is not generating magnetism the way Earth s core is. Nevertheless, it did in the past. Lunar rocks are magnetized, and the strength of the magnetic field has been measured by special techniques. Also, older rocks have stronger magnetism, suggesting that the Moon s magnetic field was stronger in the distant past, and then decreased to its weak present state. Why this happened is unknown. What is known is this: you cannot navigate around the Moon using a compass! There are other mysteries about the Moon s magnetism. Although the field was always weak and is extremely weak now, there are small areas on the Moon that have magnetic fields much stronger than the surrounding regions. These magnetic anomalies have not been figured out. Some scientists have associated them with the effects of large, basinforming impacts. Others have suggested that the 10
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