Our recent investigations have discovered inward diffusion (in-gassing) of moderately volatile elements (MVEs; e.g., Na, K and Cu) from volcanic gas into volcanic beads/droplets. In this work, we examine the distribution of sulfur in lunar orange glass beads. Our analyses reveal that sulfur exhibits a non-uniform distribution across the beads, forming U or W shaped profiles typical of in-gassing. A model developed to assess sulfur contributions from different sources (original magmatic sulfur versus atmospheric in-gassed sulfur) in the orange beads indicates that atmospheric sulfur in-gassed during eruption contributes approximately 9-24 % to the total sulfur content of an orange bead, averaging around 16 %. This in-gassed sulfur is derived from the eruption plume, where atmospheric sulfur could undergo photochemical reactions induced by UV light, leading to mass independent fractionation and a distinct sulfur isotope signature. Interestingly, a recent study discovered a small mass independent isotope fractionation of sulfur in lunar orange glass beads in drive tube 74002/1 and a lack of such mass independent isotope fractionation in black glass beads in the same lunar sample. This finding contrasts with sulfur in lunar basalts, which typically exhibit mass dependent fractionation. With our work, the observed mass independent fractionation signal in sulfur isotopes of orange beads can be attributed to the in-gassing of photolytic sulfur in the optically thin part of the eruption plume where UV light can penetrate. Using the sulfur isotope data of lunar orange beads, we estimate that the 033S value of atmospheric sulfur is approximately -0.18 %o. Our study provides new insights into the complex dynamics of volatile elements in lunar volcanic processes, highlighting the role of in-gassing in shaping sulfur isotope signatures in volcanic glass beads.

A novel method to evacuate large bins of lunar regolith simulant for deep drilling tests was proposed in the current work. This method can be used to simulate a vacuous lunar regolith environment to a maximum penetration depth of 2 m. An experimental apparatus was built and is composed of a vacuum chamber, a specially designed regolith container and a vacuum pumping system. A pressure on the order of 10 Pa could be reached with the 4.3 m(3) vacuum chamber when compacted lunar regolith simulant with a volume of 0.4 m(3) was loaded. A theoretical model to predict vacuum degree was proposed bas'ing on the viscous flow theory. Evacuation experiments with or without lunar regolith simulant inside the chamber were performed and the outgassing properties of lunar regolith simulant was experimentally studied. The results show that the outgassing rate of the lunar regolith simulant was about 10(7) times to that of the electro-polished stainless-steel.

After Vesta, the NASA Dawn spacecraft will visit the dwarf planet Ceres to carry out in-depth observations of its surface morphology and mineralogical composition in 2015. One of the important questions is whether Ceres has any outgassing activity that would lead to the formation of a thin atmosphere. The recent detection of water vapor emitted from localized source regions by Herschel (Kuppers et al., 2014) has only underscored this point. If the localized outgassing activity observed by Herschel is totally switched off, could a sizable surface-bounded exosphere still be maintained by other source mechanisms? Our preliminary assessment is that chemical sputtering via solar wind interaction and meteoroid impact are probably not adequate because of the large injection speed of the gas at production relative to the surface escape velocity of Ceres. One potential source is a low-level outgassing effect from its subsurface due to thermal sublimation with a production rate of the order of 10(24) molecules s(-1) as first considered by Fanale and Salvail (1989). If the water plumes are active, the fall-back of some of the water vapor onto Ceres' surface would provide an additional global source of water molecules on the surface with a production rate of about 10(25) molecules s(-1) In this work, different scenarios of building up a tenuous exosphere by ballistic transport and the eventual recycling of the water molecules to the polar cold trap are described. It turns out that a large fraction of the exospheric water could be transferred to the polar caps area as originally envisaged for the lunar polar ice storage. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.