History of Meteorites from the Moon Collected in Antarctica
Abstract
In large asteroidal or cometary impacts on the moon, lunar surface material can be ejected with escape velocities. A few of these rocks were captured by Earth and were recently collected on the Antarctic ice. The records of noble gas isotopes and of cosmic ray-produced radionuclides in five of these meteorites reveal that they originated from at least two different impact craters on the moon. The chemical composition indicates that the impact sites were probably far from the Apollo and Luna landing sites. The duration of the moon-Earth transfer for three meteorites, which belong to the same fall event on Earth, lasted 5 to 11 million years, in contrast to a duration of less than 300,000 years for the two other meteorites. From the activities of cosmic ray-produced radionuclides, the date of fall onto the Antarctic ice sheet is calculated as 70,000 to 170,000 years ago.
- Publication:
-
Science
- Pub Date:
- September 1989
- DOI:
- 10.1126/science.245.4923.1197
- Bibcode:
- 1989Sci...245.1197E
- Keywords:
-
- Earth-Moon System;
- Lunar Surface;
- Meteorite Collisions;
- Radioactive Age Determination;
- Antarctic Regions;
- Cosmic Rays;
- Escape Velocity;
- Radioactive Isotopes;
- Lunar and Planetary Exploration; Meteorites;
- METEORITES;
- ANTARCTIC METEORITES;
- ORIGIN;
- SOURCE;
- MOON;
- EXPOSURE AGE;
- RARE GASES;
- ISOTOPES;
- RADIONUCLIDES;
- SAMPLES;
- METEORITE;
- PARENT BODIES;
- IMPACTS;
- EJECTION;
- CHEMISTRY;
- COMPOSITION;
- TERRESTRIAL AGE;
- TIMESCALE;
- ABUNDANCE;
- YAMATO 86032;
- YAMATO 82192;
- YAMATO 82193;
- MASS SPECTROMETRY;
- ELEMENTS;
- YAMATO 791197;
- AHLA81005;
- ALH METEORITES;
- LABORATORY STUDIES;
- YAMATO METEORITES