Almost a year ago, China’s Yutu-2 rover found a strange, gel-like substance on the far south side of the moon. It looked much like the Nickelodeon slime – dark green in colour, and it glistened. The breccia — broken fragment of minerals cemented together – was easy to notice for the mission scientists as it looked very different from its surrounding soil, near a large crater. It was reported that the dark greenish and lustrous features of the material observed from the Pancam were from the possible presence of glasses.
Glasses in the lunar soil regolith are usually sourced from impact melts or volcanic eruptions; however, volcanic activity on the moon is thought to have stopped over 3 billion years ago. This would surely mean that the gel formed as a result of an impact, made up of a mix of minerals. The main component is a mineral called ‘plagioclase’, which is a major constituent in both the Earth’s and moon’s crusts. It also contained other iron-magnesium silicate minerals named olivine and pyroxene. The working team says that the structure of the substance contains these minerals that are found in multiple craters in the north area of the moon instead of just one place. This would additionally suggest that the gel wasn’t made where it was found, but instead emplaced in a different event and was ejected into a crater. The material also closely resembles lunar impact melt breccia samples returned by NASA's Apollo missions, which were dark fragments of minerals cemented together and black, shiny glass.
Writer: Ariya Gupta
10/07/2020
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