Lunar Prospecting With Chandra: "Lunar Prospecting With Chandra

Huntsville - Sep 16, 2003
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 (CfA) 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"

snip