Automated Fast and Quantitative Mineralogical Characterization of Chang’e-5 Lunar Soils
Author:
Affiliation:

Fund Project:

  • Article
  • |
  • Figures
  • |
  • Metrics
  • |
  • Reference
  • |
  • Related
  • |
  • Cited by
  • |
  • Materials
    Abstract:

    Lunar regoliths typically exhibit complicated mineralogy, texture, composition, and fine grain size, making them difficult to characterize using traditional mineralogical analytical methods. SEM-based automated mineralogy allows for quantitative and non-completely destructive assessment of bulk composition, mineralogical characteristics, and igneous rock types of lunar soils. Here, we use the TESCAN Integrated Mineral Analyzer (TIMA) to characterize a total of 79604 particles of Chang’e-5 returned lunar soil with a wide particle size range (>240 μm to <2 μm). The results showed that lunar soil mainly consists of pyroxene (36 wt. %), plagioclase (22 wt.%), glass (19 wt.%), olivine (9 wt.%), ilmenite (5 wt.%), SiO2 polymorphs (0.5 wt.%), apatite (0.2 wt.%) and troilite (0.2 wt.%), agreeing with those of the previous XRD and Raman analyses. The analytically calculated bulk compositions of the SiO2 (40.8 wt. %), MgO (6.8 wt.%), Al2O3 (10.8 wt.%), CaO (12.1 wt.%), and FeO (22.7 wt.%) were also consistent with those of the previous result obtained by wet chemical methods. The mineral association showed that basaltic pyroxene-plagioclase-olivine-ilmenite assemblages were the most common lithic clasts within lunar soil. These results indicate that Chang’e-5 lunar soil predominantly consists of local mare basalt. This study demonstrates the role of automated mineralogy technology in providing rapid, quantitative, and reliable mineralogical and compositional data, which are fundamental for investigating the bulk mineralogical and chemical characteristics of rare returned extraterrestrial materials.

    Reference
    Related
    Cited by
Get Citation

Qian Chen, Wenlei Song*, Zaicong Wang, Hongyi Chen*, Zhuang Guo, Yiheng Li, Danni Xu, Xing Wang, Kangjun Huang. Automated Fast and Quantitative Mineralogical Characterization of Chang’e-5 Lunar Soils[J]. Atomic Spectroscopy,2024,(5):381-390.

Copy
Share
Article Metrics
  • Abstract:
  • PDF:
  • HTML:
  • Cited by:
History
  • Received:
  • Revised:
  • Adopted:
  • Online: October 26,2024
  • Published:
Copyright © 2024 Atomic Spectroscopy Press Ltd All rights reserved
Supported by:Beijing E-Tiller Technology Development Co., Ltd.