Nature of the lunar far-side samples returned by the Chang'E-6 mission.

The Chang'E-6 (CE-6) mission successfully achieved return of the first samples from the far side of the Moon. The sampling site of CE-6 is located in the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin-the largest, deepest and oldest impact basin on the Moon. The 1935.3 g of CE-6 lunar samples exhibit distinct characteristics compared with previous lunar samples. This study analyses the physical, mineralogical, petrographic and geochemical properties of CE-6 lunar scooped samples. The CE-6 soil has a significantly lower bulk density (0.983 g/cm3) and true density (3.035 g/cm3) than the Chang'E-5 (CE-5) samples. The grain size of the CE-6 soil exhibits a bimodal distribution, indicating a mixture of different compositions. Mineralogically, the CE-6 soil consists of 32.6% plagioclase (anorthite and bytownite), 19.7% augite, 10% pigeonite and 3.6% orthopyroxene, and with low content of olivine (0.5%) but high content of amorphous glass (29.4%). Geochemically, the bulk composition of CE-6 soil is rich in Al2O3 (14%) and CaO (12%) but low in FeO (17%), and trace elements of CE-6 soil such as K (∼630 ppm), U (0.26 ppm), Th (0.92 ppm) and rare-earth elements are significantly lower than those of the lunar soils within the Procellarum KREEP Terrane. The local basalts are characterized by low-Ti (TiO2, 5.08%), low-Al (Al2O3 9.85%) and low-K (∼830 ppm), features suggesting that the CE-6 soil is a mixture of local basalts and non-basaltic ejecta. The returned CE-6 sample contains diverse lithic fragments, including local mare basalt, breccia, agglutinate, glasses and leucocrate. These local mare basalts document the volcanic history of the lunar far side, while the non-basaltic fragments may offer critical insights into the lunar highland crust, SPA impact melts and potentially the deep lunar mantle, making these samples highly significant for scientific research.

Study on Temperature-Dependent Uniaxial Tensile Tests and Constitutive Relationship of Modified Polyurethane Concrete.

Modified polyurethane concrete (MPUC) is a new material for steel deck pavements. In service, the pavement is often cracked due to excessive tensile stress caused by temperature changes. In order to study the tensile properties of MPUC in the diurnal temperature range of steel decks, uniaxial tensile tests of MPUC were carried out at five temperatures. Three kinds of specimens and a novel fixture were designed and fabricated to compare the results of four different tensile test methods. The deformation of the specimen was collected synchronously by two methods: pasting strain gauge and digital image correlation (DIC) technique. Based on the experiment, the tensile mechanical properties, failure modes, and constitutive relations of MPUC were studied under the effect of temperature. The research results show that the novel fixture can avoid stress concentration. By observing the fracture surface of the specimens, the bonding performance is great between the binder and the aggregate at different temperatures. The tensile strength and elastic modulus of MPUC decrease with increasing temperatures, while the fracture strain, and fracture energy increase with increasing temperatures. The formulas of temperature-dependent tensile strength, fracture strain, and elastic modulus of MPUC were established, and the constitutive relationship of MPUC is further constructed in the rising stage under uniaxial tension. The calculation results show good agreement with experimental ones.

Evidence of water on the lunar surface from Chang'E-5 in-situ spectra and returned samples.

The distribution range, time-varying characteristics, and sources of lunar water are still controversial. Here we show the Chang'E-5 in-situ spectral observations of lunar water under Earth's magnetosphere shielding and relatively high temperatures. Our results show the hydroxyl contents of lunar soils in Chang'E-5 landing site are with a mean value of 28.5 ppm, which is on the weak end of lunar hydration features. This is consistent with the predictions from remote sensing and ground-based telescopic data. Laboratory analysis of the Chang'E-5 returned samples also provide critical clues to the possible sources of these hydroxyl contents. Much less agglutinate glass contents suggest a weak contribution of solar wind implantation. Besides, the apatite present in the samples can provide hydroxyl contents in the range of 0 to 179 ± 13 ppm, which shows compelling evidence that, the hydroxyl-containing apatite may be an important source for the excess hydroxyl observed at this young mare region.

Characteristics of the lunar samples returned by the Chang'E-5 mission.

Forty-five years after the Apollo and Luna missions returned lunar samples, China's Chang'E-5 (CE-5) mission collected new samples from the mid-latitude region in the northeastern Oceanus Procellarum of the Moon. Our study shows that 95% of CE-5 lunar soil sizes are found to be within the range of 1.40-9.35 µm, while 95% of the soils by mass are within the size range of 4.84-432.27 µm. The bulk density, true density and specific surface area of CE-5 soils are 1.2387 g/cm3, 3.1952 g/cm3 and 0.56 m2/g, respectively. Fragments from the CE-5 regolith are classified into igneous clasts (mostly basalt), agglutinate and glass. A few breccias were also found. The minerals and compositions of CE-5 soils are consistent with mare basalts and can be classified as low-Ti/low-Al/low-K type with lower rare-earth-element contents than materials rich in potassium, rare earth element and phosphorus. CE-5 soils have high FeO and low Mg index, which could represent a new class of basalt.

The Moon's farside shallow subsurface structure unveiled by Chang'E-4 Lunar Penetrating Radar.

On 3 January 2019, China's Chang'E-4 (CE-4) successfully landed on the eastern floor of Von Kármán crater within the South Pole-Aitken Basin, becoming the first spacecraft in history to land on the Moon's farside. Here, we report the observations made by the Lunar Penetrating Radar (LPR) onboard the Yutu-2 rover during the first two lunar days. We found a signal penetration at the CE-4 landing site that is much greater than that at the CE-3 site. The CE-4 LPR images provide clear information about the structure of the subsurface, which is primarily made of low-loss, highly porous, granular materials with embedded boulders of different sizes; the images also indicate that the top of the mare basal layer should be deeper than 40 m. These results represent the first high-resolution image of a lunar ejecta sequence ever produced and the first direct measurement of its thickness and internal architecture.

Descent trajectory reconstruction and landing site positioning of Chang'E-4 on the lunar farside.

Chang'E-4 (CE-4) was the first mission to accomplish the goal of a successful soft landing on the lunar farside. The landing trajectory and the location of the landing site can be effectively reconstructed and determined using series of images obtained during descent when there were no Earth-based radio tracking and the telemetry data. Here we reconstructed the powered descent trajectory of CE-4 using photogrammetrically processed images of the CE-4 landing camera, navigation camera, and terrain data of Chang'E-2. We confirmed that the precise location of the landing site is 177.5991°E, 45.4446°S with an elevation of -5935 m. The landing location was accurately identified with lunar imagery and terrain data with spatial resolutions of 7 m/p, 5 m/p, 1 m/p, 10 cm/p and 5 cm/p. These results will provide geodetic data for the study of lunar control points, high-precision lunar mapping, and subsequent lunar exploration, such as by the Yutu-2 rover.

Chang'E-4 initial spectroscopic identification of lunar far-side mantle-derived materials.

Over 60 years of spacecraft exploration has revealed that the Earth's Moon is characterized by a lunar crust1 dominated by the mineral plagioclase, overlying a more mafic (richer in iron and magnesium) mantle of uncertain composition. Both crust and mantle formed during the earliest stages of lunar evolution when late-stage accretional energy caused a molten rock (magma) ocean, flotation of the light plagioclase, sinking of the denser iron-rich minerals, such as olivine and pyroxene, and eventually solidification2. Very large impact craters can potentially penetrate through the crust and sample the lunar mantle. The largest of these craters is the approximately 2,500-kilometre-diameter South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin3 on the lunar far side. Evidence obtained from orbiting spacecraft shows that the floor of the SPA basin is rich in mafic minerals4, but their mantle origin is controversial and their in situ geologic settings are poorly known. China's Chang'E-4 lunar far-side lander recently touched down in the Von Kármán crater5,6 to explore the floor of the huge SPA basin and deployed its rover, Yutu-2. Here we report on the initial spectral observations of the Visible and Near Infrared Spectrometer (VNIS)7 onboard Yutu-2, which we interpret to represent the presence of low-calcium (ortho)pyroxene and olivine, materials that may originate from the lunar mantle. Geological context6 suggests that these materials were excavated from below the SPA floor by the nearby 72-km-diameter Finsen impact crater event, and transported to the landing site. Continued exploration by Yutu-2 will target these materials on the floor of the Von Kármán crater to understand their geologic context, origin and abundance, and to assess the possibility of sample-return scenarios.

Effect of Hatch Spacing on Melt Pool and As-built Quality During Selective Laser Melting of Stainless Steel: Modeling and Experimental Approaches.

In this study, a combined simulation and experimental approach is utilized to investigate the influence of hatch spacing on the microstructure and as-built quality of 316L stainless steel (SS) samples fabricated by selective laser melting (SLM). A three-dimensional finite element model (FEM) is employed to investigate heat transfer and melt pool during the SLM of 316L SS. The phase transformation and variation of the thermo-physical properties of the materials are considered in this model. The effects of hatch spacing (H) on the temperature field, microstructure and melt pool size, overlap rate, surface quality, and relative density during the SLM of 316L SS are investigated. The simulated results indicate that, as the hatch spacing increases, the depth increases and the width of the melt pool decreases. Meanwhile, with the increase of hatch spacing, the simulated temperature of the subsequent tracks falls below the melting temperature of the first track. Moreover, the microstructures were found to coarsen with the increasing hatch spacing due to the reduced cooling rate. The optimized hatch spacing and overlap rate between adjacent tracks were obtained from numerical simulations. Simulation results illustrate that, when the optimized hatch spacing of 100 µm is adopted, fully dense parts with a smooth surface can be fabricated by SLM, thus experimentally validating the simulation results.

Enhanced dewaterability of textile dyeing sludge using micro-electrolysis pretreatment.

The effects of micro-electrolysis treatment on textile dyeing sludge dewatering and its mechanisms were investigated in this study. Capillary suction time (CST) and settling velocity (SV) were used to evaluate sludge dewaterability. Extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) concentration and sludge disintegration degree (DDSCOD) were determined to explain the observed changes in sludge dewaterability. The results demonstrated that the micro-electrolysis could significantly improve sludge dewaterability by disrupting the sludge floc structure. The optimal conditions of sludge dewatering were the reaction time of 20 min, initial pH of 2.5, Fe/C mass ratio of 1/1, and the iron powder dosage of 2.50 g/L, which achieved good CST (from 34.1 to 27.8 s) and SV (from 75 to 60%) reduction efficiency. In addition, the scanning electron microscope (SEM) images revealed that the treated sludge floc clusters are broken up and that the dispersion degree is better than that of a raw sludge sample. The optimal EPS concentration and DDSCOD to obtain maximum sludge dewaterability was 43-46 mg/L and 4.2-4.9%, respectively. The destruction of EPS was one of the primary reasons for the improvement of sludge dewaterability during micro-electrolysis treatment.

Fate of volatile aromatic hydrocarbons in the wastewater from six textile dyeing wastewater treatment plants.

The occurrence and removal of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes, styrene and isopropylbenzene (BTEXSI) from 6 textile dyeing wastewater treatment plants (TDWTPs) were investigated in this study. The practical capacities of the 6 representative plants, which used the activated sludge process, ranged from 1200 to 26000 m(3) d(-1). The results indicated that BTEXSI were ubiquitous in the raw textile dyeing wastewater, except for isopropylbenzene, and that toluene and xylenes were predominant in raw wastewaters (RWs). TDWTP-E was selected to study the residual BTEXSI at different stages. The total BTEXSI reduction on the aerobic process of TDWTP-E accounted for 82.2% of the entire process. The total BTEXSI concentrations from the final effluents (FEs) were observed to be below 1 µg L(-1), except for TDWTP-F (2.12 µg L(-1)). Volatilization and biodegradation rather than sludge sorption contributed significantly to BTEXSI removal in the treatment system. BTEXSI were not found to be the main contaminants in textile dyeing wastewater.