Moon: possible nature of the body that produced the imbrian basin, from the composition of apollo 14 samples.
Soils from the Apollo 14 site contain nearly three times as much meteoritic material as soils from the Apollo 11, Apollo 12, and Luna 16 sites. Part of this material consists of the ubiquitous micrometeorite component, of primitive (carbonaceous-chondrite-like) composition. The remainder, seen most conspicuously in coarse glass and norite fragments, has a decidedly fractionated composition, with volatile elements less than one-tenth as abundant as siderophiles. This material seems to be debris of the Cyprus-sized planetesimal that produced the Imbrian basin. Compositionally this planetesimal has no exact counterpart among known meteorite classes, though group IVA irons come close. It also resembles the initial composition of the earth as postulated by the two-component model. Apparently the Imbrian planetesimal was an Earth satellite swept up by the moon during tidal recession or capture, or an asteroid deflected by Mars into terrestrial space.
Ganapathy
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Laul
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Morgan
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Anders
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