Related papers: Sulfur in the Moon and Mercury
The chemical composition of a planetary body reflects its starting conditions modified by numerous processes during its formation and geological evolution. Measurements by X-ray, gamma-ray, and neutron spectrometers on the MESSENGER…
We review sulfur chemistry of the gas giant planets and their moons where sulfur compounds are observed. The major S-bearing gas in the upper atmospheres of the giant planets is H2S and is removed from their observable atmospheres by…
Sulfur-bearing species play crucial roles in atmospheric physical-chemical processes, atmosphere-surface interactions, and the geological evolution of Venus. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of (1) instrumental data on the…
The MESSENGER mission revealed unexpectedly high sulfur content within Mercury's surface, deviating from the Lunar regolith, which was, until recently, considered a good Mercury analogue. Mercury's exposure to energetic space weathering…
For centuries some scientists have argued that there is activity on the Moon (or water, as recounted in Parts I & II), while others have thought the Moon is simply a dead, inactive world. The question comes in several forms: is there a…
The amount and distribution of water on the lunar surface are related to the input and production of water by solar wind and meteoroid bombardment, balanced by photodestruction and mobility across the surface. Using the Stratospheric…
We investigate the prospects for the past or current existence of habitable conditions deep underneath the surfaces of the Moon and Mars as well as generic bound and free-floating extrasolar rocky objects. We construct a simple model that…
The lunar surface has been exposed to the space environment for billions of years and during this time has accumulated records of a wide range of astrophysical phenomena. These include solar wind particles and the cosmogenic products of…
The MESSENGER mission sought to discover what physical processes determined Mercury's high metal to silicate ratio. Instead, the mission has discovered multiple anomalous characteristics about our innermost planet. The lack of FeO and the…
The intense activity of cratering on the Moon and in the inner regions of the solar system was accomplished during the first 10^9 years [1]. Occasionally, some impact events occur even nowadays. In Section 1, we treat, from a historical…
Cosmic rays bombard the lunar surface producing mesons, which attenuate inside the regolith. They get slower and decay weakly into mostly sub-GeV neutrinos leaving the surface. Thus the Moon shines in neutrinos. Here we calculate spectra of…
The Earth--Moon system has been experiencing impacts from asteroids and comets for billions of years. The Moon, as an airless body, has preserved a distinct record of these events in form of impact craters and ejecta deposits, offering…
Sulfur appears to be depleted by an order of magnitude or more from its elemental abundance in star-forming regions. In the last few years, numerous observations and experiments have been performed in order to to understand the reasons…
Mars today has no active volcanism and its atmosphere is oxidizing, dominated by the photochemistry of CO2 and H2O. Using a one-dimensional photochemical model, we consider whether plausible volcanic gas fluxes could have switched the…
Mercury, the innermost planet, formed under highly reduced conditions, based mainly on surface Fe, S, and Si abundances determined from MESSENGER mission data. The minor element Cr may serve as an independent oxybarometer, but only very…
Boulders on the surfaces of planets, satellites and small bodies, as well as their geological associations, provide important information about surface processes. We analyzed all available images of the surface of Mercury that have…
While the Earth and Moon are generally similar in composition, a notable difference between the two is the apparent depletion in moderately volatile elements in lunar samples. This is often attributed to the formation process of the Moon…
Space weathering is an important surface process occurring on the Moon and other airless bodies, especially those that have no magnetic field. The optical effects of the Moon's space weathering have been largely investigated in the…
Thermochemical equilibrium and kinetic calculations are used to model sulfur and phosphorus chemistry in giant planets, brown dwarfs, and extrasolar giant planets (EGPs). The chemical behavior of individual S- and P-bearing gases and…
In Part I we recount the history of observation and laboratory measurement culminating with the excavation of water from a permanently shadowed region near the lunar South Pole by the impact of the LCROSS mission in 2009. In this…