Stratigraphy of the Apollo 17 Landslide Core 73002 From FMR Maturity and VNIR and Mössbauer Spectroscopy

A suite of samples from the Apollo missions to the Moon (1969-1973) were set aside and stored under controlled conditions to have unexamined lunar samples available decades later for analyses that take advantage of evolved sample handling techniques, maturation of then existing instrumentation, and development of new analytical techniques and instrumentation [e.g., 1]. One preserved sample is the Apollo 17 double drive tube core (73001/2) that was driven into the lunar surface on the landslide deposit at Station 3 on the South Massif in the Taurus-Littrow valley [2]. The deeper section (73001) was stored frozen in a Core Sample Vacuum Container (CSVC) to maximize preservation of lunar volatiles.

We report here, as a part of the Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis (ANGSA) Initiative [1,3], stratigraphy for the upper core section (73002) with
respect to maturity (ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) maturity index Is/FeO [4-6]), visible-near-IR (VNIR) spectroscopy, and, for representative samples, grain-size analysis and Mössbauer spectroscopy. Stratigraphy provides data to model the dynamics of lunar landslide deposits and their post-emplacement evolution in comparison to impact-driven mixing on an airless body and stratigraphic context for volatile and (if any) organic behavior. Reported by [7] are preliminary results for multispectral imaging and hyperspectral scanning of the first dissection pass of 73002.