@article{8f9f2261c11d47c0aee67c2f85b86abe,
title = "Impact remnants rich in carbonaceous chondrites detected on the Moon by the Chang{\textquoteright}e-4 rover",
abstract = "The Moon has experienced an intense bombardment history since its formation1. Fragments of the impactor can remain on the lunar surface2–4 and can provide evidence of the evolution of the impactor composition and impact population in the Earth–Moon system3–5. However, the retained impactor fragments previously identified in the Apollo samples have been well mixed into bulk lunar regolith due to the subsequent impact gardening, and their properties cannot be easily isolated3,6,7. Here we report observations of a two-metre-sized crater that formed less than one million years ago obtained by the Yutu-2 rover of Chang{\textquoteright}e-4. Hyperspectral images in the visible and near-infrared range (0.45–0.945 μm) with a spatial resolution less than 1 mm per pixel highlight the presence of glassy material with high concentration (47%) of carbonaceous chondrites. We identify this material as remnants of the original impactor that was not entirely vaporized by the impact. Although carbonaceous chondrite fragments have been found in Apollo samples8,9, no carbonaceous chondrite remnant had been directly observed on the lunar surface by remote sensing exploration. We suggest that carbonaceous chondrite-like bodies may still provide one of the sources of water to the present Moon.",
author = "Yazhou Yang and Shuai Li and Zhu, {Meng Hua} and Yang Liu and Bo Wu and Jun Du and Wenzhe Fa and Rui Xu and Zhiping He and Chi Wang and Bin Xue and Jianfeng Yang and Yongliao Zou",
note = "Funding Information: The Chang{\textquoteright}e-4 mission was carried out by the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, and the data were provided by the China National Space Administration. We thank the Chang{\textquoteright}e-4 engineering team for their tremendous efforts to make such a successful mission possible. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 11941001, 42002306 and 42072337), the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant number XDB41000000) and the Civil Aerospace Pre-research Project (grant numbers D020201, D020203 and D020204). Y.Y. also acknowledges support from the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (grant number 2019TQ0323) and the Pandeng Program of the National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences. M.-H.Z. was supported by the Science and Technology Development Fund, Macau (grant numbers 0079/2018/A2 and 0020/2021/A1) and the Civil Aerospace Presearch Project (grant number D020202). B.W. was supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (RIF project number R5043-19). We acknowledge the developers of iSALE and the pySALEPlot visualization package. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.",
year = "2022",
month = feb,
doi = "10.1038/s41550-021-01530-w",
language = "English",
volume = "6",
pages = "207--213",
journal = "Nature Astronomy",
issn = "2397-3366",
publisher = "Nature Publishing Group",
number = "2",
}