Sample 75081

Skip to content | Skip to navigation

Site Actions

Site Sections

Breadcrumbs

Lunar Petrographic Thin Section Set Study Guide

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF 75081

Note: These links are for sample 70181, which is currently used in place of sample 75081 in the thin section packages.

Coarse-fine particles

Figure 59. Coarse-fine particles from mature highland soil 68501 including microbreccias and agglutinates.

These are fragments of "coarse-fines" from a mature mare soil collected by the Apollo 17 astronauts. Most fragments are of high-Ti mare basalts that are local to the site (fig. 59). In this size range, many are only single minerals from mare basalts. There are a wide range of basalt textures. Vesicular glassy agglutinates are abundant in this soil (fig. 56). These contain trains of very fine metallic Fe grains that cause the ferromagnetic resonance signal used to determine the regolith maturity index. Larger Fe bleb may be from meteoritic debris.

Note the abundance of orange glass and devitrified glass similar to that of sample 74220. Can you find any exotic particles from the nearby lunar highlands in your thin section?