The moon as the origin of the Earth's continents

Paleontological data and celestial mechanics suggest that the Moon may have stayed in a geosynchronous corotation around the Earth as a geostationary satellite. Excess energy may have slowly been released as heat, transferred as movement around the Sund or lost with matter ejected into space.The radial segregation process which was responsible for the formation of the Earth's iron core also brought water and lithophile elements dissolved in the water towards the surface. These elements were deposited in the area facing the Moon for several reasons, and a single continent was formed. Its level continuously matched the sea level, so the continent was formed under shallow water. When the geosynchronous corotation of the Moon became impossible, the tides become important, the Moon receded and the Earth slowed down and became more and more spherical; the variation of its oblateness from about 8% to 0.3% was incompatible with the shape of the continent, that broke into pieces.Almost all the data were have on the Earth's age, the composition of the continents, sea water and the atmosphere fit this approach as does lunar data.Paper presented at the European Workshop on Planetary Sciences, organised by the Laboratorio di Astrofisica Spaziale di Frascati, and held between April 23–27, 1979, at the Accademia Nazionale del Lincei in Rome, Italy.     

On the chronology of lunar origin and evolution

An origin of the Moon by a Giant Impact is presently the most widely accepted theory of lunar origin. It is consistent with the major lunar observations: its exceptionally large size relative to the host planet, the high angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system, the extreme depletion of volatile elements, and the delayed accretion, quickly followed by the formation of a global crust and mantle.According to this theory, an impact on Earth of a Mars-sized body set the initial conditions for the formation and evolution of the Moon. The impact produced a protolunar cloud. Fast accretion of the Moon from the dense cloud ensured an effective transformation of gravitational energy into heat and widespread melting. A “Magma Ocean” of global dimensions formed, and upon cooling, an anorthositic crust and a mafic mantle were created by gravitational separation.Several 100 million years after lunar accretion, long-lived isotopes of K, U and Th had produced enough additional heat for inducing partial melting in the mantle; lava extruded into large basins and solidified as titanium-rich mare basalt. This delayed era of extrusive rock formation began about 3.9 Ga ago and may have lasted nearly 3 Ga.A relative crater count timescale was established and calibrated by radiometric dating (i.e., dating by use of radioactive decay) of rocks returned from six Apollo landing regions and three Luna landing spots. Fairly well calibrated are the periods ≈4 Ga to ≈3 Ga BP (before present) and ≈0.8 Ga BP to the present. Crater counting and orbital chemistry (derived from remote sensing in spectral domains ranging from γ- and x-rays to the infrared) have identified mare basalt surfaces in the Oceanus Procellarum that appear to be nearly as young as 1 Ga. Samples returned from this area are needed for narrowing the gap of 2 Ga in the calibrated timescale. The lunar timescale is not only used for reconstructing lunar evolution, but it serves also as a standard for chronologies of the terrestrial planets, including Mars and possibly early Earth.The Moon holds a historic record of Galactic cosmic-ray intensity, solar wind composition and fluxes and composition of solids of any size in the region of the terrestrial planets. Some of this record has been deciphered. Secular mixing of the Sun was constrained by determining ³He/⁴He of solar wind helium stored in lunar fines and ancient breccias. For checking the presumed constancy of the impact rate over the past ≈3.1 Ga, samples of the youngest mare basalts would be needed for determining their radiometric ages.Radiometric dating and stratigraphy has revealed that many of the large basins on the near side of the Moon were created by impacts about 4.1 to 3.8 Ga ago. The apparent clustering of ages called “Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB)” is thought to result from migration of planets several 100 million years after their accretion.The bombardment, unexpectedly late in solar system history, must have had a devastating effect on the atmosphere, hydrosphere and habitability on Earth during and following this epoch, but direct traces of this bombardment have been eradicated on our planet by plate tectonics. Indirect evidence about the course of bombardment during this epoch on Earth must therefore come from the lunar record, especially from additional data on the terminal phase of the LHB. For this purpose, documented samples are required for measuring precise radiometric ages of the Orientale Basin and the Nectaris and/or Fecunditatis Basins in order to compare these ages with the time of the earliest traces of life on Earth.A crater count chronology is presently being built up for planet Mars and its surface features. The chronology is based on the established lunar chronology whereby differences between the impact rates for Moon and Mars are derived from local fluxes and impact energies of projectiles. Direct calibration of the Martian chronology will have to come from radiometric ages and cosmic-ray exposure ages measured in samples returned from the planet.     

The Flux of Lunar Meteorites onto the Earth

Numerous new finds of lunar meteorites in Oman allow detailed constraints to be obtained on the intensity of the transfer of lunar matter to the Earth. Our estimates show that the annual flux of lunar meteorites in the mass interval from 10 to 1000 g to the entire Earth's surface should not be less than several tenths of a kilogram and is more likely equal to tens or even a few hundred kilograms, i.e., a few percent of the total meteorite flux. This corresponds to several hundred or few thousand falls of lunar meteorites on all of Earth per year. Even small impact events, which produce smaller than craters on the Moon smaller than 10 km in diameter, are capable of transferring lunar matter to the Earth. In this case, the Earth may capture between 10 to 100% of the mass of high-velocity crater ejecta leaving the Moon. Our estimates for the lunar flux imply rather optimistic prospects for the discovery of new lunar meteorites and, consequently, for the analyses of the lunar crust composition. However, the meteorite-driven flux of lunar matter did not play any significant role in the formation of the material composition of the Earth's crust, even during the stage of intense meteorite bombardment.     

The scientific rationale for the C1XS X-ray spectrometer on India's Chandrayaan-1 mission to the moon

The UK-built Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Spectrometer (C1XS) will fly as an ESA instrument on India's Chandrayaan-1 mission to the Moon, launched in October 2008. C1XS builds on experience gained with the earlier D-CIXS instrument on SMART-1, but will be a scientifically much more capable instrument. Here we describe the scientific objectives of this instrument, which include mapping the abundances of the major rock-forming elements (principally Mg, Al, Si, Ti, Ca and Fe) in the lunar crust. These data will aid in determining whether regional compositional differences (e.g., the Mg/Fe ratio) are consistent with models of lunar crustal evolution. C1XS data will also permit geochemical studies of smaller scale features, such as the ejecta blankets and central peaks of large impact craters, and individual lava flows and pyroclastic deposits. These objectives all bear on important, and currently unresolved, questions in lunar science, including the structure and evolution of any primordial magma ocean, as revealed by vertical and lateral geochemical variations in the crust, and the composition of the lunar mantle, which will further constrain theories of the Moon's origin, thermal history and internal structure.     

Fission and geosynchronous release of the Moon

The problem of the origin of the Moon has led to various hypotheses: simultaneous accretion, fission, capture, etc. These theories were based primarily on global mechanical considerations. New geological data (Turcotteet al., 1974; Kahn and Pompea, 1978) have led to fresh approaches and new versions of these theories.As suggested by Wise (1969) and O'Keefe (1972), the initial Earth may have taken unstable forms when radial segregation sped up the rotation. The Moon may have been created as the small part of the pyroid of Poincaré.Fission theory was mainly discarded, in the past, on the basis of energy considerations. We are now arriving at the conclusion that these considerations are void if the fission was followed by a very long period of geostationary rotation of the Moon at a distance of about 3 Earth radius (i.e., out of the Roche limit). Indeed the large amount of energy of the initial system could have been released slowly and therefore evacuated by losses of material and radiation.The accretion of the Earth and the radial segregation of heavy chemicals toward the center has led to a differential rotation of the different layers with a faster rotation at the center. During the geostationary period the Moon was synchronous with respect to the surface layer. That Earth-Moon system has both a correct angular momentum and a large stability provided that the viscosity of intermediate layers was small enough, which is in concordance with its high temperature.Even with a very hot system, a superficial cold layer appears because of its low conductivity and the radiation equilibrium with outer space. This implies a slow loss of energy: the geosynchronous Moon receded extremely slowly.During the geostationary period lithophile elements were extracted with water by the radial segregation and were deposited in the area facing the Moon. One massive continent was formed, as suggested by Grjebine (1978).As the continent became thicker and sank into the mantle, convection currents appeared and speeded up the cooling of the Earth. The viscosity increased and the synchronization between the Moon and the surface of the Earth became more difficult to maintain. When synchronism was broken important lunar tides transferred energy and momentum from the Earth to the Moon which receded toward its present position and the modification of its equilibrium shape explains the formation of lunar maria in the near side.Paper presented at the European Workshop on Planetary Sciences, organised by the Laboratorio di Astrofisica Spaziale di Frascati, and held between April 23–27, 1979, at the Accademia Nazionale del Lincei in Rome, Italy.     

Magnetization of celestial bodies with special application to the primeval Earth and Moon

The magnetic fields of celestial bodies are usually supposed to be due to a ‘hydromagnetic dynamo’. This term refers to a number of rather speculative processes which are supposed to take place in the liquid core of a celestial body. In this paper we shall follow another approach which is more closely connected with hydromagnetic processes well-known from the laboratory, and hence basically less speculative. The paper should be regarded as part of a general program to connect cosmical phenomena with phenomena studied in the laboratory. As has been demonstrated by laboratory experiments, a poloidal magnetic field may be increased by the transfer of energy from a toroidal magnetic field through kink instability of the current system. This mechanism can be applied to the fluid core of a celestial body. Any differential rotation will produce a toroidal field from an existing poloidal field, and the kink instability will feed toroidal energy back to the poloidal field, and hence amplify it. In the Earth-Moon system the tidal braking of the Earth's mantle acts to produce a differential angular velocity between core and mantle. The braking will be transferred to the core by hydromagnetic forces which at the same time give rise to a strong magnetic field. The strength of the field will be determined by the rate of tidal braking. It is suggested that the magnetization of lunar rocks from the period ?4 to ?3 Gyears derives from the Earth's magnetic field. As the interior of the Moon immediately after accretion probably was too cool to be melted, the Moon could not produce a magnetic field by hydromagnetic effects in its core. The observed lunar magnetization could be produced by such an amplified Earth field even if the Moon never came closer than 10 or 20 Earth's radii. This hypothesis might be checked by magnetic measurements on the Earth during the same period.     

The evolution of the moon

The thermal evolution of the Moon as it can be defined by the available data and theoretical calculations is discussed. A wide assortment of geological, geochemical and geophysical data constrain both the present-day temperatures and the thermal history of the lunar interior. On the basis of these data, the Moon is characterized as a differentiated body with a crust, a 1000-km-thick solid mantle (lithosphere) and an interior region (core) which may be partially molten. The presence of a crust indicates extensive melting and differentiation early in the lunar history. The ages of lunar samples define the chronology of igneous activity on the lunar surface. This covers a time span of about 1.5 billion yr, from the origin to about 3.16 billion yr ago. Most theoretical models require extensive melting early in the lunar history, and the outward differentiation of radioactive heat sources.Thermal history calculations, whether based on conductive or convective computation codes define relatively narrow bounds for the present day temperatures in the lunar mantle. In the inner region of the 700 km radius, the temperature limits are wider and are between about 100 and 1600°C at the center of the Moon. This central region could have a partially or totally molten core.The lunar heat flow values (about 30 ergs/cm²s) restrict the present day average uranium abundance to 60 ± 15 ppb (averaged for the whole Moon) with typical ratios of K/U = 2000 and Th/U = 3.5. This is consistent with an achondritic bulk composition for the Moon.The Moon, because of its smaller size, evolved rapidly as compared to the Earth and Mars. The lunar interior is cooling everywhere at the present and the Moon is tectonically inactive while Mars could be and the Earth is definitely active.     

The great-circle pattern of large circular maria: product of an earth-moon encounter

The circular maria - Orientale, Imbrium, Serenitatis, Crisium, Smythii, and Tsiolkovsky -lie nearly on a lunar great circle. This pattern can be considered the result of a very close, non-capture encounter between Moon and Earth early in solar-system history. Of critical importance in analyzing the effects of such an encounter is the position of the weightlessness limit of the Earth-Moon System which is located at about 1.63R _e, measured from the center of Earth to center of Moon. Within this weightlessness limit, material can be pulled from the lunar surface and interior by Earth's gravity and either escape from the Moon or be redistributed onto the lunar surface. In the case of an encounter with a non-spinning Moon, backfalling materials would be distributed along a lunar great circle. However, if the Moon is rotating during the encounter, the backfall pattern will deviate from the great circle, the amount depending on the rate and direction of spin. Such a close encounter model may be related to the pattern of circular maria if materials departing from the source region are visualized as spheroids of molten lunar upper mantle basalt. These spheroids, then, would impact onto the lunar surface to form a pattern of lava lakes. Radiometric dates from mare rocks are consistent with this model of mare formation if the older mare rock dates are considered to date the encounter and younger dates are considered to date subsequent volcanic eruptions on a structurally weakened Moon.     

Moments of inertia of the lunar globe,and their bearing on chemical differentiation of its outer layers

It is pointed out that the observed moments of inertia of the Moon, disclosed by its librations, are influenced mainly by the distribution of mass in the outer zone in which the lithostatic pressure is less than 10 kb (i.e., in the outer shell not more than 200 km deep); and a conspicuous departure of such moments from those expected in hydrostatic equilibrium disclosed that these layers could never have been fluid. In the same way, the actual shape of the lunar surface cannot represent a solidified surface of a fluid, petrified at any distance from the Earth.The shape of the Moon, and differences of its moments of inertia must reflect the way in which the initial process of cold accretion fell short of producing a globe with strictly spherically-symmetrical stratification of material; and has nothing to do with tides - present or fossil. Such melting or lava flows as may have occurred at the Moon's surface from time to time must have remained localized, and without much effect on the dynamical properties of the Moon. A global ocean of molten magma some 200 km in depth (postulated sometimes to provide a reservoir in which the differentiation of elements exhibited by surface rocks could have taken place) at any time in the past is incompatible with the dynamical evidence on the motion of the Moon about its center of gravity.Bellcomm, Inc., 955 L'Enfant Plaza North, S.W. Washington, D.C. 20024, U.S.A.     

The origin of the Moon: Theories involving joint formation with the Earth

A planet the size of the Earth or the Moon is much like a blast furnace; it produces slag-like rock floating on a mass of liquid metal. In the Earth, the mantle and crust are the slag, and the core is the liquid iron.In the Moon, there is clear chemical evidence that liquid iron was separated from the mass, but the Moon has no detectable iron core. This points to some kind of joint origin, which put the metallic iron in the Earth's core. For instance, the Moon might have been a detached part of the rocky matter of the Earth, as suggested by G. H. Darwin in the 1880's. But is is also clear, as Ringwood has pointed out, the there has been an enormous loss of volatiles from both Earth and Moon, but especially from the Moon. It may be that the Moon formed from a sediment-ring of small bodies detached somehow from the outer parts of the Earth, as Öpik has suggested.If tektites come from the Moon, then Darwin's suggestion is probably right; if they come from the Earth, then the Öpik-Ringwood sediment ring may be the origin.Paper presented at the AAAS Symposium on the Early History of the Earth and Moon in Philadelphia on 28 December 1971.     

The Earth-Moon system during the late heavy bombardment period - Geochemical support for impacts dominated by comets

The solid planets assembled 4.57 Gyr ago during a period of less than 100 Myr, but the bulk of the impact craters we see on the inner planets formed much later, in a narrow time interval between 3.8 and 3.9 Gyr ago, during the so-called late heavy bombardment (LHB). It is not certain what caused the LHB, and it has not been well known whether the impactors were comets or asteroids, but our present study lend support to the idea that it was comets. Due to the Earth’s higher gravity, the impactors will have hit the Earth with ∼twice the energy density that they hit the Moon, and the bombardment will have continued on Earth longer than on the Moon. All solid surface of the Earth will have been completely covered with craters by the end of the LHB.However, almost nothing of the Earth’s crust from even the end of this epoch, is preserved today. One of the very few remnants, though, is exposed as the Isua greenstone belt (IGB) and nearby areas in Western Greenland. During a field expedition to Isua, we sampled three types of metasedimentary rocks, deposited ∼3.8 billion years ago, that contain information about the sedimentary river load from larger areas of surrounding land surfaces (mica-schist and turbidites) and of the contemporaneous seawater (BIF). Our samples show evidence of the LHB impacts that took place on Earth, by an average of a seven times enrichment (150 ppt) in iridium compared to present-day ocean crust (20 ppt). The clastic sediments show slightly higher enrichment than the chemical sediments, which may be due to contamination from admixtures of mafic (proto-crustal) sources.We show that this enrichment is in agreement with the lunar cratering rate and a corresponding extraterrestrial LHB contribution to the Earth’s Hadean-Eoarchean crust, provided the bulk of the influx was cometary (i.e., of high velocity and low in CI abundance), but not if the impactors were meteorites (i.e. had velocities and abundances similar to present-day Earth-crossing asteroids). Our study is a first direct indication of the nature of the LHB impactors, and the first to find an agreement between the LHB lunar cratering rate and the Earth’s early geochemical record (and the corresponding lunar record). The LHB comets that delivered the iridium we see at Isua will at the same time have delivered the equivalent of a ∼1 km deep ocean, and we explain why one should expect a cometary ocean to become roughly the size of the Earth’s present-day ocean, not only in terms of depth but also in terms of the surface area it covers. The total impacting mass on the Earth during the LHB will have been ∼1000 tons/m².     

The formation of the moon

Supporting evidence for the fission hypothesis for the origin of the Moon is offered. The maximum allowable amount of free iron now present in the Moon would not suffice to extract the siderophiles from the lunar silicates with the observed efficiency. Hence extraction must have been done with a larger amount of iron, as in the mantle of the Earth, of which the Moon was once a part, according to the fission hypothesis. The fission hypothesis gives a good resolution of the tektite paradox. Tektites are chemically much like products of the mantle of the Earth; but no physically possible way has been found to explain their production from the Earth itself. Perhaps they are a product of late, deep-seated lunar volcanism. If so, the Moon must have inside it some material with a strong resemblance to the Earth's mantle. Two dynamical objections to fission are shown to be surmountable under certain apparently plausible conditions.     

Preservation potential of implanted solar wind volatiles in lunar paleoregolith deposits buried by lava flows

The lunar surface is bathed in a variety of impacting particles originating from the solar wind, solar flares, and galactic cosmic rays. These particles can become embedded in the regolith and/or produce a range of other molecules as they pass through the target material. The Moon therefore contains a record of the variability of the solar and galactic particle fluxes through time. To obtain useful temporal snapshots of these processes, discrete regolith units must be shielded from continued bombardment that would rewrite the record over time. One mechanism for achieving this preservation is the burial of a regolith deposit by a later lava flow. The archival value of such deposits sandwiched between lava layers is enhanced by the fact that both the under- and over-lying lava can be dated by radiometric techniques, thereby precisely defining the age of the regolith layer and the geologic record contained therein. The implanted volatile species would be vulnerable to outgassing by the heat of the over-lying flow, at temperatures exceeding 300-700 °C. However, the insulating properties of the finely particulate regolith would restrict significant heating to shallow depths. We have therefore modeled the heat transfer between lunar mare basalt lavas and the regolith in order to establish the range of depths below which implanted volatiles would be preserved. We find that the full suite of solar wind volatiles, consisting predominantly of H and He, would survive at depths of ∼13-290 cm (for 1-10 m thick lava flows, respectively). A substantial amount of CO, CO₂, N₂ and Xe would be preserved at depths as shallow as 3.7 cm beneath meter-thick flows. Given typical regolith accumulation rates during mare volcanism, the optimal localities for collecting viable solar wind samples would involve stacks of thin mare lava flows emplaced a few tens to a few hundred Ma apart, in order for sufficient regolith to develop between burial events. Obtaining useful archives of Solar System processes would therefore require extraction of regolith deposits buried at quite shallow depths beneath radiometrically-dated mare lava flows. These results provide a basis for possible lunar exploration activities.     

Precession of the lunar core

Goldreich (Goldreich, P. [1967]. J. Geophys. Res. 72, 3135) showed that a lunar core of low viscosity would not precess with the mantle. We show that this is also the case for much of lunar history. But when the Moon was close to the Earth, the Moon’s core was forced to follow closely the precessing mantle, in that the rotation axis of the core remained nearly aligned with the symmetry axis of the mantle. The transition from locked to unlocked core precession occurred between 26.0 and 29.0 Earth radii, thus it is likely that the lunar core did not follow the mantle during the Cassini transition. Dwyer and Stevenson (Dwyer, C.A., Stevenson, D.J. [2005]. An Early Nutation-Driven Lunar Dynamo. AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts GP42A-06) suggested that the lunar dynamo needs mechanical stirring to power it. The stirring is caused by the lack of locked precession of the lunar core. So, we do not expect a lunar dynamo powered by mechanical stirring when the Moon was closer to the Earth than 26.0-29.0 Earth radii. A lunar dynamo powered by mechanical stirring might have been strongest near the Cassini transition.     

On the implications of an olivine dominated upper mantle on the development of a moon of fission origin

In a series of previous papers, a petrological model for the Moon has been developed based on the assumption that the Moon is a globe of differentiated terrestrial mantle material which fissioned from the Earth. One of the major constraints which this model matches is the hypothesis that the lunar upper mantle is dominated by pyroxene. However, it has been recently shown that olivine is most probably the major constituent of the lunar upper mantle and that, at least that part of the Moon has a composition which is very similar to that of pyrolite - the proposed composition of the Earth's mantle. As a result of this new model constraint, the previously proposed differentiation scheme for a Moon of fission origin is reviewed and found to be inadequate, despite modification, for explaining the near pyrolite composition of the lunar upper mantle. As a result, a solidification sequence, which has been proposed to explain the rhythmic banding in terrestrial ultra mafic complexes, is investigated and found to be able to account for the high olivine content of the upper mantle, assuming a pyrolite composition for the Moon.     

Indigenous abundances of siderophile elements in the lunar highlands: Implications for the origin of the moon

Substantial indigenous abundances of siderophile elements have been found to be present in the lunar highlands. The abundances of 13 siderophile elements in the parental magma of the highlands crust were estimated by using a simple model whereby the Apollo 16 highlands were regarded as being a mixture of three components (i.e. cumulus plagioclase + intercumulus magma that was parentel to the highlands crust + meteoritic contamination by ordinary chondrites). The parental magma of the highlands was found to possess abundances of siderophile elements that were generally similar to the abundances of the unequivocally indigenous siderophile elements in primitive, low-Ti mare basalts. This striking similarity implies that these estimated abundances in the parental highlands magma are truly indigenous, and also supports the basic validity of our simple model.It is shown that metal/silicate fractionation within the Moon cannot have been the cause of the siderophile element abundances in the parental highlands magma and primitive, low-Ti mare basalts. The relative abundances of the indigenous siderophile elements in highland and mare samples seem, instead, to be the result of complex processes which operatedprior to the Moon's accretion.The abundances of the relatively involatile, siderophile elements in the parental highlands magma are strikingly similar to the abundances observed in terrestrial oceanic tholeiites. Furthermore, the abundances of the relatively volatile, siderophile elements in the parental highlands magma are also systematically related to the corresponding abundances in terrestrial oceanic tholeiites. In fact, the parental magma of the lunar highlands can be essentially regarded as having been a volatile-depleted, terrestrial oceanic tholeiite.The complex, siderophile element fractionations in the Earth's upper mantle are thought to be the result of core segregation. However, it is well-known that the siderophile element abundances do not correspond to expectations based solely upon equilibration of metal/silicate at low-pressures, as evidenced by the over-abundances of Au, Re, Ni, Co and Cu. Ringwood (1977a) has suggested that the siderophile element abundances in the Earth's upper mantle are the product of equilibration at very high-pressures between the mantle and a segregating core that contained substantial quantities of an element with a low atomic weight, such as oxygen. Comparable processes cannot have operated within the Moon due to its small internal pressures and the very small size of its possible core. Therefore, the fact that the Moon exhibits a systematic resemblance to the Earth's upper mantle is highly significant.The origin of the Moon is discussed in the context of these results. The possibility that depletion of siderophile elements occurred in an earlier generation of differentiated planetesimals similar to those which formed the basaltic achondrites, stony-irons, and irons is examined but can be dismissed on several grounds. It seems that the uniquely terrestrial siderophile signature within the Moon can be explained only if the Moon was derived from the Earth's mantle subsequent to core-formation.Paper dedicated to Professor Hannes Alfvén on the occasion of his 70th birthday, 30 May, 1978.     

Optimisation of seismic network design: Application to a geophysical international lunar network

Fundamental scientific questions concerning the internal structure and dynamics of the Moon, and their implications on the Earth-Moon System, are driving the deployment of a new broadband seismological network on the surface of the Moon. Informations about lunar seismicity and seismic subsurface models from the Apollo missions are used as a priori information in this study to optimise the geometry of future lunar seismic networks in order to best resolve the seismic interior structure of the Moon. Deep moonquake events and simulated meteoroid impacts are the assumed seismic sources. Synthetic P and S wave arrivals computed in a radial seismic model of the Moon are the assumed seismic data. The linearised estimates of resolution and covariance of radial seismic velocity perturbations can be computed for a particular seismic network geometry. The non-linear inverse problem relating the seismic station positions to the linearised estimates of covariance and resolution of radial seismic velocity perturbations is written and solved by the Neighbourhood Algorithm. This optimisation study favours near side seismic station positions at southern latitudes in order to constrain the deep mantle structure from deep moonquake data at large epicentral distances. The addition of a far side station allows to divide by two the size of the error bar on the seismic velocity model. The monitoring of lunar impact flashes from the Earth allows to improve the radial seismic model in the top of the mantle by adding much more meteor impact data at short epicentral distances due to the high accuracy of the space/time location of these seismic sources. Such meteor impact detections may be necessary to investigate the 3D structure of the lunar crust.     

Inhomogeneities in the internal structure of Mars and the Moon from data on their gravity fields

The interpretation of planetary anomalies in the gravity fields of Mars and the Moon in relationship to their inhomogeneous internal structure is considered. The Martian and lunar gravity field models up to order and degree 20, three-layer (crust, mantle, core) model parameters, and planetary parameters have been used as input data. Models of the three-dimensional density distribution have been constructed for Mars and the Moon. The maps of horizontal density inhomogeneities at depths of 50, 100, and 1700 km for Mars and 60, 100, and 1400 km for the Moon are interpreted.     

Bombardment as a cause of the lunar asymmetry

A comparison of the lunar frontside gravity field with topography indicates that low-density ( 2.9 g cm^–3) types of rock form a surface layer or crust of variable thickness: 40-60 km beneath terrae; 20-40 km beneath non-mascon maria; 0-20 km beneath mascon maria. The observed offset between lunar centers of mass and figure is consistent with farside crustal thicknesses of 40-50 km, similar to frontside terra thicknesses.The Moon is asymmetric in crustal thickness, and also in the distribution of maria and gamma radioactivity. Early bombardment of the Moon by planetesimals, in both heliocentric and geocentric orbits, is examined as a possible cause of the asymmetries. The presence of a massive companion (Earth) causes a spin-orbit coupled Moon to be bombarded non-uniformly. The most pronounced local concentration of impacts would have occurred on the west limb of the Moon, when it orbited close to the Earth, if low-eccentricity heliocentric planetesimals were still abundant in the solar system at that time.A very intense bombardment of this type could have redistributed crustal material on the Moon, thinning the west limb crust appreciably. This would have caused a change in position of the principal axes of inertia, and a reorientation of the spin-orbit coupled Moon such that the thinnest portion of its crust turned toward one of the poles. Erupting lavas would have preferentially flooded such a thin-crusted, low-lying area. This would have caused another readjustment of principal moments, and a reorientation of the Moon such that the mare areas tipped toward the equator. The north-south and nearside-farside asymmetries of mare distribution on the present Moon can be understood in terms of such a history.Paper dedicated to Prof. Harold C. Urey on the occasion of his 80th birthday on 29 April 1973.     

Accretional heating as the major cause of compositional differences among meteorite parent bodies,the Moon,and Earth

Accretional energy can be retained with sufficient efficiency in the outer layers of the Moon due to the considerable amount of debris falling back into large craters.Heating of meteorite parent bodies occurs mainly after their accretion, by destructive collisions. The heating was generally not sufficient to differentiate the parent bodies completely so that iron meteorites would originate from the mantle, rather than from the core of a meteorite parent body. Assuming that the Earth and Moon accreted from material of similar chemical composition, we suggest that only from the outer lunar shell is there a loss of gases and volatiles due to accretional melting. The Earth melted completely and degassing was efficient for the whole mass of the Earth leading to its ≈20% higher uncompressed mean density in comparison to the Moon. Because of its lower gravitational field, gases and volatiles escaped much more easily from the lunar atmosphere than from the terrestrial one, leading to the observed depletion in volatiles of the outer parts of the Moon.