January 2020
Old rocks, new tricks - a lunar link to modern volcanology
...During this epoch, an initial magma ocean began crystallising olivine and pyroxene minerals which then slowly sank and formed ... of every volcano containing useful mineralogy (not just olivine). A ‘proxy’ monitoring system for hazardous volcanoes ...
06 November 2020
The Moon could have a long-lost "twin" in orbit around Mars
... ancestry and belong to the same group known as the Eureka family. Eureka family members contain lots of olivine; a magnesium-iron silicate mineral that is common in Earth's subsurface. That is, all except for one rogue rock...
23 December 2015
First new 'ground truth' in 40 years as Chinese rover Yuto presents analysis of moon rocks
... Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University. Finding a rock that is rich in both doesn’t add up. Olivine is a magnesium iron silicate, and the ratio between magnesium and iron is quite variable in different forms of the...
January 2018
When it comes to water Mars may not be the promised land
...water/rain was the cause. It is also well known that olivine erupted with lava becomes serpentine upon contact with liquid water in ... was still kept stable by lithostatic pressure, all the olivine observed along the equatorial belt of Mars (where all ...
14 December 2015
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover observes sand dunes two stories tall
... NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have also indicated that mineral composition is not evenly distributed in the dunes. Olivine, a mineral in dark volcanic rock is a major component of the dunes – it is also one of the first to be altered into other...
02 October 2018
New technique could provide fresh insights into how the Moon was formed
... ‘unlock’ this information by producing 3D images which are then mapped to reveal the history of individual crystals of olivine. Dr. Matt Pankhurst of Instituto Volcanológico de Canarias and NASA lunar principle investigator explains; “With this new...
