Authors: Fu-Yuan Wu, Qiu-Li Li, Yi Chen, Sen Hu, Zong-Yu Yue, Qin Zhou, Hao Wang, Wei Yang, Heng-Ci Tian, Chi Zhang, Jin-Hua Li, Lin-Xi Li, He-Jiu Hui, Chun-Lai Li, Yang-Ting Lin, Xian-Hua Li, John W. Delano
Published: 2024-01-02
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-earth-040722-100453
Source: Full article
The Chinese spacecraft Chang'e-5 (CE-5) landed on the northern Ocean Procellarum and returned 1,731 grams of regolith. The CE-5 regolith is composed mostly of fragments of basalt, impact glass, agglutinates, and mineral fragments. The basalts could be classified as of a low-Ti and highly fractionated type based on their TiO2 content of ∼5.3 wt% and Mg# of ∼28. Independent of petrographic texture, the CE-5 basalts have a uniform eruption age of 2,030 ± 4 Ma, demonstrating that the Moon remained volcanically active until at least ∼2.0 Ga. Although the CE-5 landing site lies within the so-called Procellarum KREEP [potassium (K), rare earth elements (REE), and phosphorus (P)] Terrane, neither the CE-5 basalts nor the mantle source regions of those basalts were enriched in KREEP components, such as incompatible elements, water, sulfur, or chlorine. Therefore, it would be a new and stimulating task in the future to look for the triggering mechanism of the young volcanism on the Moon.