Search Publications
Lunar elemental abundances as derived from Chandrayaan-2
Bhatt, M.; Narendranath, S.; Pillai, Netra S. +6 more
The distribution of Mg, Al, Si, Ca and Fe on the lunar surface are important to understand the petrological characteristics of the Moon and its geological evolution. We derived new elemental distribution maps using the Chandrayaan-2 Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer (CLASS) experiment onboard the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter. These are the first set of …
Crustal origin for olivine in the lunar Shioli crater ejecta boulders: Insights from the geological setting of Theophilus crater and Nectaris basin
Bhattacharya, Satadru; Pathak, Sumit; Kumar, P. Senthil +6 more
On the Moon, impact craters and basins expose a wide range of crustal and mantle rocks that provide excellent opportunity for sampling them, understanding their origins and reconstructing spatial and temporal evolution of lunar interior. The previous studies detected olivine-bearing mantle rocks in and around large impact craters and basins. The J…
Chronology, composition, and mineralogy of mare basalts in the junction of Oceanus Procellarum, Mare Imbrium, Mare Insularum, and Mare Vaporum
Chen, Jian; Zhao, Zixu; Ling, Zongcheng +2 more
The timeline of volcanic activity is critical for constraining the thermal evolution of the Moon. The spatial extents of mare basalts, major products of lunar volcanism, have been precisely extracted from LROC (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera) image mosaics. With the maria extents newly extracted from LROC mosaics, we found that a large area o…
Chronological and compositional mapping of the Mare Orientale basin using Chandrayaan-1 - M3 and LRO datasets
Karthi, A.; Arivazhagan, S.
The lunar multiring mare basins have different ages, compositions and are associated with the diverse unit of mare deposits, providing evidence for the origin and evolution of the lunar crust. The multiring basins offer the opportunity to assess many unknown questions that may reveal the lunar geologic standpoint. The Mare Orientale basin is one o…
Geology of the Crüger-Sirsalis Basin: Evidence for prolonged volcanism in the southwestern near side of the Moon
Bhatt, Megha; Bhardwaj, Anil; Srivastava, Neeraj +1 more
The Pre-Nectarian Crüger-Sirsalis Basin (centered at 16.0°S, 293.0°E; ~ 475 km in diameter) is a primarily degraded and obscured impact basin on the Moon. This study presents the first geological description of the Crüger-Sirsalis Basin using remote sensing datasets from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), Chandrayaan-1, and Kaguya missions. An in…
Spectral properties of lunar impact melt deposits from Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) data
Tornabene, L. L.; Neish, C. D.; Cannon, K. M. +3 more
Lunar impact melt deposits have unusual surface properties, unlike any measured terrestrial lava flow. Radar observations suggest that they are incredibly rough at decimeter scales, but they appear smooth in high-resolution, meter-scale optical images. The cause of their unusual surface roughness is unknown. In this work, we investigate the proper…
Characterizing southern portion of Mare Vaporum with improved Chandrayaan-1 M3 data
Videen, Gorden; Shkuratov, Yuriy; Surkov, Yehor +3 more
We investigate a southern portion of Mare Vaporum using Chandrayaan-1 M3 images for which we suppress striped noise. Additional data processing allows us to analyze such spectral parameters as the depths and positions of the absorption bands near 1 and 2 µm. Mineral types were mapped using the cluster analysis of Adams diagram for…
Lunar ilmenite content as assessed by improved Chandrayaan-1 M3 data
Videen, Gorden; Shkuratov, Yuriy; Surkov, Yehor +2 more
We map ilmenite abundance on the Moon surface using Chandrayaan-1 M3 data, exploiting the strength of the ilmenite absorption band near 1550 nm. The mapping is carried out for an area comprising the border between Mare Serenitatis and Mare Tranquillitatis. We use an improved filtration of the strip noise that is characteristic of Chandr…
Geological characterization of Chandrayaan-2 landing site in the southern high latitudes of the Moon
Harish; Bhatt, Megha; Bhardwaj, Anil +7 more
ISRO's lunar orbiter-lander-rover mission Chandryaan-2 is scheduled to be launched in the mid of 2019. In this contribution, we have carried out detailed geological characterization of the prime landing site (70.9°S, 22.8°E) of the Chandrayaan-2 lander - "Vikram". The proposed landing site is located amidst the nearside lunar highlands at high sou…
Improved Chandrayaan-1 M3 data: A northwest portion of the Aristarchus Plateau and contiguous maria
Shkuratov, Yu.; Surkov, Ye.; Ivanov, M. +5 more
We provide and test a method to obtain significant improvement of available Chandrayaan-1 M3 data. The advance is achieved using the Gaussian λ-convolution of spectra and Fourier filtration of images. The main result is imagery of the reflectance across different wavelengths as well as parameters of 1 µm and 2 µm absorption …