47th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (2016) 2106.pdf INVESTIGATING YOUNG (<100 MILLION YEARS) IRREGULAR MARE PATCHES ON THE MOON USING MOON MINERALOGY MAPPER OBSERVATIONS. J. Grice1, K. L. Donaldson Hanna1, N. E. Bowles1, P. H. Schultz2, and K. A. Bennett3, 1Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, University of Oxford, Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford, UK (
[email protected]), 2Dept. of Earth, Environmental and Plane- tary Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA, and 3School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA. Introduction: The investigation and characteriza- these features and the evolution of lunar basalts over tion of volcanism on a planetary surface provides the time. Compositional differences across each IMP as best insight into the composition, structure, and thermal well as differences with surrounding mare materials history of its interior. The lunar maria, vast plains are investigated using visible to near infrared (VNIR) formed of basaltic flows, are limited to and cover 17% observations from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) of the lunar near side [1]. Radiometric age dating of instrument. returned Apollo samples and crater counts from remote Data and Methods: M3, an imaging spectrometer observations indicates that mare basaltic volcanism was onboard the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, mapped the active from ~4.2 to 0.8 Ga [e.g. 2-5]. lunar surface across the VNIR (0.43-3.0μm) in 85 Lunar-Orbiter/Apollo images and Clementine bands [9]. The focus of this initial analysis is on the UVVIS observations identified four regions, including two largest IMPs, Sosigenes (max length of 5 km) and Ina, of small-scale, low relief patches of rubble with a Ina (diameter of 3 km).