Universities Space Research Association
Lunar and Planetary Institute | 2017 Oct 04
[img3="Artistic impression of the Moon, looking over the Imbrium Basin, with lavas erupting, venting gases, and producing a visible atmosphere. Credit: NASA MSFC"]https://www.lpi.usra.edu/features/10051 ... img-lg.png[/img3][hr][/hr]A new study shows that an atmosphere was produced around the ancient Moon, 3 to 4 billion years ago, when intense volcanic eruptions spewed gases above the surface faster than they could escape to space. The study was published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
When one looks up at the Moon, dark surfaces of volcanic basalt can be easily seen to fill large impact basins. Those seas of basalt, known as maria, erupted while the interior of the Moon was still hot and generating magmatic plumes that sometimes breached the lunar surface and flowed for hundreds of kilometers. Analyses of Apollo samples indicate those magmas carried gas components, such as carbon monoxide, the ingredients for water, sulfur, and other volatile species. ...
The two largest pulses of gases were produced when lava seas filled the Serenitatis and Imbrium basins about 3.8 and 3.5 billion years ago, respectively. The margins of those lava seas were explored by astronauts of the Apollo 15 and 17 missions, who collected samples that not only provided the ages of the eruptions, but also contained evidence of the gases produced from the erupting lunar lavas. ...
Lunar Volcanism Produced a Transient Atmosphere around the Ancient Moon - Debra H. Needham, David A. Kring
- Earth and Planetary Science Letters 478:175 (15 Nov 2017) DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2017.09.002