Chemical composition of the Moon's 'primary' crust – a clue at a terrestrial origin

The Moon is one of the best characterized objects in space science, yet its origin still actively researched. Available orbital, geophysical, and geochemical information imposes clear restrictions on the origin and evolution of the Earth-Moon system (e.g., Canup 2008, 2012; Ćuk and Stewart 2012; Young et al. 2016). In regard to geochemical constraints, one of the most puzzling conundrums is posed by the similar isotopic fingerprints of the Earth and the Moon (e.g., Wiechert et al. 2001; Armytage et al. 2012; Zhang et al. 2012; Young et al. 2016; Schiller et al. 2018), together with the apparent lunar depletion in volatile elements (e.g., Ringwood and Kesson 1977; Wanke et al. 1977; Albarède et al. 2015; Taylor 2014). This apparent lunar volatile depletion is most notable in the low K content in comparison to U, a finding based on chemical analyses of samples collected from the lunar surface and lunar meteorites, and on spectroscopic observations of the lunar near-surface, despite both having been heavily processed in the past ~ 4.4 billion years.

In the past 4.4 billion years, space has been a harsh environment for our Moon, especially in the beginning, when the young Sun was still very active and the young Moon was continuously bombarded by meteorites of varying sizes. Solar wind and micro-meteoritic interactions with the lunar surface led to rapid and intensive processing of the lunar crust. Hence, the K/U depletion trend observable on today's lunar surface does not necessarily reflect a K/U ratio valid for the Moon in its entirety. We model the evolution of the abundances of the major elements over the past 4.3 to 4.4 billion years to derive the composition of the original lunar crust. Accounting for this processing, our model results show that the original crust is much less depleted in volatiles than the surface observable today, exhibiting a K/U ratio compatible with Earth and the other terrestrial planets, which strengthens the theory of a terrestrial origin for the Moon.