It is thought that the Moon accreted from the protolunar disk that was assembled after the last giant impact on Earth. Due to its high temperature, the protolunar disk may act as a thermochemical reactor in which the material is processed before being incorporated into the Moon. Outstanding issues like devolatilisation and istotopic evolution are tied to the disk evolution, however its lifetime, dynamics and thermodynamics are unknown. Here, we numerically explore the long term viscous evolution of the protolunar disk using a one dimensional model where the different phases (vapor and condensed) are vertically stratified. Viscous heating, radiative cooling, phase transitions and gravitational instability are accounted for whereas Moon's accretion is not considered for the moment. The viscosity of the gas, liquid and solid phases dictates the disk evolution. We find that (1) the vapor condenses into liquid in 10 years, (2) a large fraction of the disk mass flows inward forming a hot and compact liquid disk between 1 and 1.7 Earth's radii, a region where the liquid is gravitationally stable and can accumulate, (3) the disk finally solidifies in 103 to 105 years. Viscous heating is never balanced by radiative cooling. If the vapor phase is abnormally viscous, due to magneto-rotational instability for instance, most of the disk volatile components are transported to Earth leaving a disk enriched in refractory elements. This opens a way to form a volatile-depleted Moon and would suggest that the missing Moon's volatiles are buried today into the Earth. The disk cooling timescale may be long enough to allow for planet/disk isotopic equilibration. However large uncertainties on the disk physics remain because of the complexity of its multi-phased structure. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Methanol (CH3OH) is one of the primordial volatiles contained within icy solids in the outer solar nebula. This paper investigates the impact chemistry of CH3OH ice through a series of impact experiments. We discuss its fate during the accretion and evolution stages of large icy bodies, and assess the possibility of intact delivery of cometary volatiles to the lunar surface. Our experimental results show that the peak shock pressures for initial and complete dissociation of CH3OH ice are approximately 9 and 28 GPa, respectively. We also found that CO is more abundant than CH4 in the gas-phase products of impact-induced CH3OH dissociation. Our results further show that primordial CH3OH within icy planetesimals could have survived low-velocity impacts during accretion of icy satellites and dwarf planets. These results suggest that CH3OH may have been a source of soluble reducing carbon and that it may have acted as antifreeze in liquid interior oceans of large icy bodies. In contrast, CH3OH acquired by accretion on icy satellites and Ceres would have been dissociated efficiently by subsequent impacts, perhaps during the heavy bombardment period, owing to the expected high impact velocities. For example, if Callisto originally contained CH3OH, cometary impacts during the late heavy bombardment period would have resulted in the formation of a substantial atmosphere (ca. >= 10(-4) bar) composed of CO, H-2, and CH4. To account for the current CO levels in Titan's atmosphere, the CH3OH content in its crust may have been much lower than that typical of comets. Our numerical simulations also indicate that intact delivery of cometary CH3OH to the lunar surface would not have occurred, which suggests that CH3OH found in a persistently-shadowed lunar region probably formed through low-temperature surface chemistry on regolith. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Ever since their discovery the regular satellites of Jupiter and Saturn have held out the promise of providing an independent set of observations with which to test theories of planet formation. Yet elucidating their origins has proven elusive. Here we show that Iapetus can serve to discriminate between satellite formation models. Its accretion history can be understood in terms of a two-component gaseous subnebula, with a relatively dense inner region, and an extended tail out to the location of the irregular satellites, as in the SEMM model of Mosqueira and Estrada (2003a,b) (Mosqueira, I., Estrada, P.R. [2003a]. Icarus 163, 198-231; Mosqueira, I., Estrada, P.R. [2003b]. Icarus 163, 232-255). Following giant planet formation, planetesimals in the feeding zone of Jupiter and Saturn become dynamically excited, and undergo a collisional cascade. Ablation and capture of planetesimal fragments crossing the gaseous circumplanetary disks delivers enough collisional rubble to account for the mass budgets of the regular satellites of Jupiter and Saturn. This process can result in rock/ice fractionation as long as the make up of the population of disk crossers is non-homogeneous, thus offering a natural explanation for the marked compositional differences between outer solar nebula objects and those that accreted in the subnebulae of the giant planets. For a given size, icy objects are easier to capture and to ablate, likely resulting in an overall enrichment of ice in the subnebula. Furthermore, capture and ablation of rocky fragments become inefficient far from the planet for two reasons: the gas surface density of the subnebula is taken to drop outside the centrifugal radius, and the velocity of interlopers decreases with distance from the planet. Thus, rocky objects crossing the outer disks of Jupiter and Saturn never reach a temperature high enough to ablate either due to melting or vaporization, and capture is also greatly diminished there. In contrast, icy objects crossing the outer disks of each planet ablate due to the melting and vaporization of water-ice. Consequently, our model leads to an enhancement of the ice content of Iapetus, and to a lesser degree those of Titan, Callisto and Ganymede, and accounts for the (non-stochastic) compositions of these large, low-porosity outer regular satellites of Jupiter and Saturn. For this to work, the primordial population of planetesimals in the Jupiter-Saturn region must be partially differentiated, so that the ensuing collisional cascade produces an icy population of greater than or similar to 1 m size fragments to be ablated during subnebula crossing. We argue this is likely because the first generation of solar nebula similar to 10 km planetesimals in the Jupiter-Saturn region incorporated significant quantities of Al-26. This is the first study successfully to provide a direct connection between nebula planetesimals and subnebulae mixtures with quantifiable and observable consequences for the bulk properties of the regular satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, and the only explanation presently available for Iapetus' low density and ice-rich composition. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.