Mineralogical and petrographical characterization of lunar mare soils and basalts for resource utilization

Colonization of the Moon requires usage of the indigenous resources. Efficient utilization of these natural resources requires detailed knowledge of the concentration and distribution of the various minerals and glasses. In addition, extraction feasibility must be investigated. Application of X-ray digital-imaging techniques, previously and currently used to evaluate terrestrial mineral engineering problems, were applied to characterize the mineralogy and petrography of some lunar high-Ti mare basalts and soils. The results indicate that high-Ti immature and submature mare soils and high-Ti basalts contain similar amounts of ilmenite, contrary to previous evaluations. In addition, mineral liberation analyses show that the amounts of free ilmenite in the immature and submature soils and crushed basalts were similar. However, analysis of the magnetic separation of these basalts and soils shows that ilmenite from the basalts was enriched ~ 60% better than the ilmenite from the soils. This dichotomy is attributed to the presence of Fe-metal bearing impact-produced glass adhering to soil grains. Impact-produced melting caused the ilmenite content of mature soils to be considerably less, as compared to basalts and immature and submature soils with similar titanium content. The raw mare soils are excellent feedstocks for hydrogen reduction to produce an oxygen supply on the Moon, because the soils have similar ilmenite content as the basalts and they are already pulverized. In addition to mineral resource evaluations, detailed soil modal data were generated by X-ray digital imaging analyses of a suite of mare soils from the Apollo 11, 12, 15, and 17 sampling sites. These data represent the first collection of estimates of the total mineral and glass content, including the phases in multimineralic particles, of soils from all Apollo mare sites. These type of data are requisite for accurate calibration of remote sensing techniques. Remote sensing analyses are used to glean information about the mineralogical and petrological character of the Moon and other airless bodies. As such, accurate calibrations with mineral compositional data are necessary for obtaining reliable modelling results by spectral reflectance studies.