Highly reduced meteorites: a comparison with Mercury’s surface through minero-petrological and spectroscopic investigation

Compositional and spectroscopic data acquired by the NASA’s MESSENGER (Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging) mission led to the hypothesis that planet Mercury formed from highly reduced materials, such as the asteroidal parent bodies of enstatite chondrite meteorites. The mineralogy of the planet surface is thought to be dominated by FeO-poor pyroxene and olivine, Na-rich plagioclase and Mg- Ca-Fe sulphides assemblage (Nittler & Weider, 2019). These characteristics suggest that the best analogues of the planet surface currently at our disposal are represented by highly reduced meteorites, in particular aubrites (Burbine et al., 2002) and enstatite chondrite impact melts (Udry et al., 2019).