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Estimation of lunar major elemental abundances in Chang’E-3 landing site based on Active Particle-induced X-ray Spectrometer (APXS)

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Abstract

Elemental abundance provides an effective vehicle to understand lunar petrologic characteristics and evolutional history. The APXS mounted on the Yutu rover provides a valuable opportunity to determine the major elemental abundances in lunar soil within a short distance. In this study, we processed the APXS spectra including energy calibration, dead time correction and nonlinear least-squares fitting, and determined the abundances of the lunar major elements using the fundamental parameter method. In the calculation of X-ray fluorescence yield, a finite element method (FEM) was employed to improve the accuracy. The major elemental abundances derived from Chang’E-3 (CE-3) APXS possess a good consistency with the result of LP-GRS (Lunar Prospector gamma-ray spectrometer) data in the landing region. Compared with the chemical composition of the returned lunar rock samples, we draw the conclusion that the lunar soils in CE-3 landing site are fragments of mare basalts. Our conclusion is supported by the geological map of Mare Imbrium.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41372341), Wuhan Science and Technology Project (Grant No. 2015010101010025), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) (Grant No. CUG110410). We would like to thank the Ground Research & Application System (GRAS) for APXS data reception and preprocessing and thank XingZhu Cui (Institute of High Energy Physics Chinese Academy of Sciences) and XiaoPing Zhang (Macau University of Science and Technology) for their technical assistance and providing the chemical composition of the calibration target. Finally we would like to thank the reviewers for their earnest review and pertinent suggestion.

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  1. Hubei Subsurface Multi-scale Imaging Key Laboratory, Institute of Geophysics and Geomatics, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Jian Wang & Xianmin Wang

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  1. Jian Wang
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  2. Xianmin Wang
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Correspondence to Xianmin Wang.

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Wang, J., Wang, X. Estimation of lunar major elemental abundances in Chang’E-3 landing site based on Active Particle-induced X-ray Spectrometer (APXS). Astrophys Space Sci 359, 8 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-015-2454-9

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