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Problems of the study and exploration of the Moon, which is of paramount interest for cosmogony, planetology, and Earth sciences in the context of a comprehensive study of the Solar System, are discussed. A historical review of lunar exploration is given, a fundamental contribution to which was made by the Soviet lunar program, carried out with the help of automatic spacecraft in the first decades of the space age. The review is timed to coincide with the revival of lunar exploration within the framework of the Russian national space program. The current state of knowledge about the Moon is considered—first of all, key questions about its origin and early evolution. This is of paramount importance for the reconstruction of the main processes of formation of the entire family of bodies in the Solar System, including the early history of the Earth, as well as the reasons for the various evolutionary paths of the Earth and the terrestrial planets. At the present stage, exploration of the Moon as a strategic foothold on the path of human space exploration and the creation of elements of the future lunar infrastructure using local natural resources in the potentially most demanded polar regions are urgent. The South Pole is the target of the Russian Luna-25 and Luna-27 missions, with an extensive science program that aims to start a multipurpose program with the efficient use of new-generation robotics. This program predates Russian plans for manned flights to the Moon.
There are serious contradictions between the geophysical and geochemical classes of models of the chemical composition and internal structure of the Moon, associated with the assessment of the abundance of the main oxides. The search for a potential consensus between the models was carried out on the basis of a set of geophysical and geochemical data using the Monte-Carlo method using the Markov chain scheme in combination with a method of minimization of the Gibbs free energy. The influence of the chemical composition and mineralogy of several conceptual models on the internal structure of the Moon has been studied. Two classes of chemical composition models are considered—the E models with terrestrial values of Al2O3 and CaO and M models with their higher content, as well as two classes of the most popular geochemical models, the Taylor Whole Moon (TWM) and Lunar Primitive Upper Mantle (LPUM) models, with ~45 wt % SiO2, but with different concentrations of refractory oxides and FeO. In both classes of E and M models, the lunar mantle is enriched in silica (~50 wt % SiO2) and FeO (11–13 wt %, Mg# 79–81) relative to the bulk composition of the silicate Earth (BSE, ~45 wt % SiO2, ~8 wt % FeO, Mg# 89). Such high concentrations of SiO2 and FeO become the determining factors for understanding the features of the mineral, velocity, and density structure of the lunar mantle. For the E and M models and geochemical models TWM and LPUM, the speed of sound and the density of stable phase associations are calculated. For E and M models, good agreement was obtained between the velocities of P- and S-waves and seismic sounding data from the Apollo program, which supports the idea of a silica-rich (olivine-pyroxenite) upper mantle. Unlike the Earth’s upper mantle, the dominant mineral in the Moon’s upper mantle is low-calcium orthopyroxene, not olivine. In contrast, the sound velocities of silica-unsaturated compositions, both FeO and Al2O3 enriched (TWM) and depleted (LPUM) models, do not match the seismic signatures. Thermodynamically justified restrictions on the chemical composition, mineralogy, and physical characteristics of the mantle based on the E and M models make it possible to eliminate some contradictions between the geochemical and geophysical classes of models of the internal structure of the Moon. Simultaneous enrichment in ferrous iron and silica is difficult to reconcile with the hypothesis of the formation of the Moon as a result of a giant impact from the substance of the Earth’s primitive mantle or from the substance of a shock body (bodies) of chondrite composition. Limitations on lunar concentrations of FeO and SiO2 probably correspond to the parent bodies of some achondrites.
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