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Mission Moho
This page presents a summary of Mission Moho, a Mission proposal submitted to IODP in April 2007, to drill the ocean lithosphere down to the Moho. The mid-ocean ridge and oceanic lithosphere community has been involved with the establishment of the plan presented in this proposal via the IODP/JOI/Ridge2000/InterRidge sponsored Mission Moho workshop held in Portland Oregon in September 2006.
Creation of new oceanic crust by seafloor spreading is the dominant geologic process on Earth. Seafloor spreading has been operating for at least 3.8 billion years, and more than 60% of the Earth’s surface today is paved by ocean crust formed in this way. Ocean crust records the Earth’s origin and evolution, and exerts the primary control on mass and heat transfer between the Earth’s interior and hydrosphere. It hosts an extensive biosphere, with unique chemosynthetic communities existing without recourse to the sun’s energy.
Across the ocean basins there is a seismic boundary – the Mohorovičić discontinuity, or ‘Moho’ – that represents the transition between the crust and the mantle. Crossing this frontier has been the foremost scientific goal of ocean drilling since the advent of the plate tectonic paradigm in the late 1950s, and was one of the driving forces for the scientific ocean drilling programs of the four decades since.
With the new technologies now available to us and under development by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, for the first time we have the capability of realizing our long-held aspiration to sample a complete section of in situ ocean crust and shallow mantle. This is the goal of ‘Mission Moho’.
To achieve this goal is to understand how the surface of the Earth is paved, its internal architecture, and the geodynamic engine of plate tectonics. Mission Moho, through IODP international partnership, will create, for generations to come, a legacy equivalent to Man’s missions to the Moon.
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Mission Moho Summary
The Mohorovičić Discontinuity, commonly known as the “Moho”, is a seismically imaged acoustic interface within the Earth below which compressional wave velocities (Vp) exceed 8 km/s. In the ocean crust this step in seismic velocity occurs at 5-8 km depth and, away from plate boundaries and transform faults, the Moho is commonly a bright reflector. It is commonly assumed that the Moho also represents the boundary between mafic igneous rocks crystallized from magmas that form the crust and the (...)
Mission Moho Proponents
Lead proponents
Benoît Ildefonse, CNRS, Montpellier University, France (contact proponent, Petrophysics and tectonics)
Natsue Abe, JAMSTEC/IFREE, Yokosuka, Japan (Mantle petrology and geochemistry)
Peter B. Kelemen, LDEO, Columbia University, USA (Mantle and igneous petrology and geochemistry)
Hidenori Kumagai, JAMSTEC/IFREE, Yokosuka, Japan (Mantle and igneous geochemistry)
Damon A.H. Teagle, NOCS, Southampton, UK (Alteration petrology and geochemistry)
Douglas S. Wilson, University (...)
