Chandra Press Room :: Lunar Prospecting With Chandra :: September 16, 2003: "Lunar Prospecting With Chandra
September 16, 2003

CXC RELEASE: 03-08

Steve Roy
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL
Phone: 256-544-6535

Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Observatory Center, CFA, Cambridge, MA
Phone: 617-496-7998
cxcpress@cfa.harvard.edu "

Observations of the bright side of the Moon with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have detected oxygen, magnesium, aluminum and silicon over a large area of the lunar surface. The abundance and distribution of those elements will help to determine how the Moon was formed.

"We see X-rays from these elements directly, independent of assumptions about the mineralogy and other complications," said Jeremy Drake of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., at a press conference at the "Four Years with Chandra" symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

"We have Moon samples from the six widely-space Apollo landing sites, but remote sensing with Chandra can cover a much wider area," continued Drake. "It's the next best thing to being there, and it's very fast and cost-effective."

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