Lunar Crustal Structure and Thermo-Mechanical Evolution

Abstract:

In recent years, lunar exploration programs worldwide have accumulated a large amount of remote sensing and in-situ observational data, and the latest Chinese mission has returned lunar samples to Earth. The related research continuously advances our understanding of the internal structure and evolution of the Moon. High resolution and precision gravity data from the GRAIL mission have revealed a highly inhomogeneous crustal structure of the Moon, which has been preserved since the early evolution of the planet. In the early 600 Ma of the lunar evolution, external impact events and the internal thermal evolution process together shape the lunar structure, and set the stage for its subsequent geologic evolution. Numerical simulation is a critical tool to backtrack the influence of impact events on the crustal structure and thermo-mechanical evolution of the Moon. This talk will review the current observational constraints on the physical structure and chemical composition of the lunar crust, and explain how the numerical simulation results help us explain the observed structures.

Speaker: 
Dr. Min DING @ MUST
Place: 
Zoom ID: 885 6999 9778 , passcode: astroPKU
Time: 
Tuesday, June 15, 2021 - 1:30PM to Tuesday, June 15, 2021 - 2:30PM
Link: 
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88569999778?pwd=ajd1QmROdGhld0U0NFhDN3VuaDZzUT09
Biography: 
Prof. Min Ding is an assistant Professor at State Key Laboratory of Lunar and Planetary Sciences, Macau University of Science and Technology since 2019. Min received her Bachelor's degree from University of Science and Technology of China in 2009, and graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in 2015. Then she worked as Postdoc Associate at MIT and at Peking University. As a planetary geophysicist, she is intrigued by the interaction between long-term tectonic evolution and short-term catastrophic processes. By combining numerical simulation with geodetic observations, her research focuses on thermo-mechanical evolution of the lithosphere and its response to various loading processes (e.g., impacts, volcanoes and earthquakes) on time scales from minutes to millions of years.