moon – Lightsources.org

#EBSstory How can iron in the moon and meteorites help to understand the origin of the Solar System?

2023/10/232023/11/07

Using ESRF-EBS, scientists from Leibniz University Hannover are investigating the origins of the Solar System by studying samples from the moon and micrometeorites.

Meteorites are remnants of material from the early solar system. Our Earth accumulates on average 100 tons per day of these extraterrestrial samples, which largely exhibit spherical shapes. The presence of iron in them provides insights into the formation and composition of the solar system.

Equally, detecting the different forms of iron in moon samples can shed light on the geology of the moon, its history and how celestial bodies form in our solar system.

Regarding the moon, after the Apollo mission, back in the 70s scientists studied several samples and found that iron was very scarce. However, recent studies have found that iron and other metals are more abundant in certain zones in the moon, notably the darker zones, than in the Earth. This effectively disputes the hypothesis that the moon’s metal comes from the Earth’s debris after it collided with a Mars-sized planet called Theia, 4.5 billion years ago.

“Iron in the moon is a very valuable resource as it can be used to construct infrastructure and equipment, for example in the case of a potential lunar space station to carry out research”, explains Franz Renz, professor at Leibniz University Hannover (LUH) and leader of the team.

The team came to the ESRF with samples from both the moon and meteorites. They used the technique of Synchrotron Mössbauer Source to characterise the iron-rich microscopic meteorites, of a diameter of around 100 microns on average, collected from an up to 3.8-million-year-old continuous sedimentary record in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Because this desert is the oldest and driest temperate desert on Earth, it preserves the samples in optimal condition to monitor changes in flux, types and composition of extraterrestrial material over time.

Read more on ESRF website

Image: Lunar samples.

Credit: F. Renz.

A little bit of the moon just landed at ANSTO

2019/08/122019/08/12

Research on lunar meteorite and moon crater analogues coincides with Science Week.

Researchers at the Australian Synchrotron are currently collaborating on a particularly rare, other-worldly sample; a lunar meteorite. “Although we do work on the moons of the outer planets, I believe this is our first sample from Earth’s moon, which could be more than four billion years old,” said Dr Helen Brand, planetary geologist and senior beamline scientist at the Australian Synchrotron.

Lunar meteorites are rocks found on Earth that were ejected from the Moon by the impact of an asteroid or another body. “These objects, which originate primarily from the moon’s crust, are extremely rare and precious. Because of their scarcity, scientists often use analogues or man-made versions of meteorites for investigations. “At the moment it is quite exciting as I have two projects relating to actual and analogue lunar objects, both of which are scheduled for the Imaging and Medical Beamline at the Synchrotron,” she said. n, which could be more than four billion years old,” said Dr Helen Brand, planetary geologist and senior beamline scientist at the Australian Synchrotron.

Insights into Titan’s atmosphere

2018/11/132018/11/22

Terahertz/Far Infrared beamlines assisted investigation into possible composition of lower atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan.

Although firmly located on earth, the Australian Synchrotron’s Terahertz/Far Infrared beamline (THz/Far IR) is one of three synchrotron facilities in the word able to simulate the extreme conditions of distant planetary worlds.
The most recently reported research using the beamline published in Earth and Space Chemistry, involved recreating the pressure and temperatures environments in the hazy atmosphere surrounding Saturn’s moon Titan.

“We are interested in Titan because it is the most Earth-like of the planetary bodies possessing an atmosphere of mostly nitrogen and methane,” said co-author Rebecca Auchettl (pictured above), a PhD candidate who was supervised by Dr Courtney Ennis, formerly of La Trobe University now at the University of Otago in New Zealand.

Image: Co-author Rebecca Auchettl, PhD candidate.

New clues to cut through the mystery of Titan’s atmospheric haze

2018/10/082018/10/12

A team including Berkeley Lab scientists homes in on a ‘missing link’ in Titan’s one-of-a-kind chemistry.

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is unique among all moons in our solar system for its dense and nitrogen-rich atmosphere that also contains hydrocarbons and other compounds, and the story behind the formation of this rich chemical mix has been the source of some scientific debate.
Now, a research collaboration involving scientists in the Chemical Sciences Division at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has zeroed in on a low-temperature chemical mechanism that may have driven the formation of multiple-ringed molecules – the precursors to more complex chemistry now found in the moon’s brown-orange haze layer.
The study, co-led by Ralf Kaiser at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and published in the Oct. 8 edition of the journal Nature Astronomy, runs counter to theories that high-temperature reaction mechanisms are required to produce the chemical makeup that satellite missions have observed in Titan’s atmosphere.

Image: The atmospheric haze of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon (pictured here along Saturn’s midsection), is captured in this natural-color image (box at left). A study that involved experiments at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source has provided new clues about the chemical steps that may have produced this haze.
Credits: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Space Science Institute, Caltech

Diamond shines its light on moon rocks

2018/10/022018/10/03

Nearly 50 years after our first steps on the Moon, rock samples from the Apollo missions still have a lot to tell us about lunar formation, and Earth’s volcanoes.

An international collaboration involving scientists in Tenerife, the US and the UK, are using Diamond, the UK’s national synchrotron light source, to investigate Moon rocks recovered during the Apollo Missions in a brand new way.
Dr. Matt Pankhurst of Instituto Volcanológico de Canarias and NASA lunar principle investigator explains: “We have used a new imaging technique developed at Diamond to carry out 3D mapping of olivine – a common green mineral found in the Earth’s sub-surface and in these Moon rock samples. These maps will be used to improve understanding of the Moon’s ancient volcanic systems and help to understand active geological processes here on Earth.
With this new technique, our team may be able to recover from these Moon rock samples information such as what the patterns of magma flow within the volcanic system were, what the magma storage duration was like, and potentially even identify eruption triggers. The data will be analysed using state-of-the-art diffusion modelling which will establish the history of individual crystals.”

>Read more on the Diamond Light Source website

Image: Dr Matt Pankhurst studies one of the moon rock samples from the Apollo 12 & 15 missions at Diamond Light Source

From Moon Rocks to Space Dust

2018/06/112018/07/12

Specialized equipment, techniques, and expertise at Berkeley Lab attract samples from far, far away.

From moon rocks to meteorites, and from space dust to a dinosaur-destroying impact, the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has a well-storied expertise in exploring samples of extraterrestrial origin.

This research – which has helped us to understand the makeup and origins of objects within and beyond our solar system – stems from the Lab’s long-standing core capabilities and credentials in structural and chemical analyses and measurement at the microscale and nanoscale.

Berkeley Lab’s participation in a new study, detailed June 11 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focused on the chemical composition of tiny glassy grains of interplanetary particles – likely deposited in Earth’s upper atmosphere by comets – that contain dust leftover from the formative period of our solar system.

That study involved experiments at the Lab’s Molecular Foundry, a nanoscale research facility, and the Advanced Light Source (ALS), which supplies different types of light, from infrared light to X-rays, for dozens of simultaneous experiments.

Image: Moon dust and rock samples photographed at Berkeley Lab.
Credit: Berkeley Lab

Extraterrestrial Oceans

2018/01/092018/01/15

Exploring the solar system does not need spacecraft

One of the amazing things scientists can do at Diamond is to recreate conditions of other parts of the Universe. Recently they used this remarkable ability to peer into the salty waters hidden underneath kilometres of ice on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons.

In September, NASA ended the Cassini mission in spectacular fashion, crashing the spacecraft into Saturn. For twenty years, Cassini brought us closer to our gas giant neighbour and its moons. The probe made astonishing discoveries about one of them: Enceladus. This small moon has plumes of gas erupting from its surface, it has a rocky core covered in a thick layer of ice, and in between lies a deep, salty ocean. It is one of the most promising places to look for extraterrestrial life. Enceladus is one of the few places in the Solar System where liquid water is known to exist.

Spacecraft aren’t our only way of exploring the solar system, and Stephen leads a team of experimental astrophysicists based at Diamond and Keele University (UK), who have been recreating the conditions in Enceladus’s salty ocean right here in Harwell. They have been using Diamond’s astoundingly bright light to investigate one of the more mysterious properties of water – its ability to form clathrates when water is cooled under pressure. Clathrates are ice-like structures that behave like tiny cages, and can trap molecules such as carbon dioxide and methane.

Image Credit: LPG-CNRS-U. Nantes/Charles U., Prague.