Compositional Units on the Moon: The Role of South Pole-Aitken Basin

Details Compositional Units on the Moon: The Role of South Pole-Aitken Basin Compositional Units on the Moon: The Role of South Pole-Aitken Basin

Jan 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002mbns.conf...46p&link_type=abstract

The Moon Beyond 2002: Next Steps in Lunar Science and Exploration, p. 46

Physics

Lunar Surface, Lunar Craters, Mineralogy, Geochemistry, Lunar Maps, Iron, Thorium, Titanium

Scientific paper

Many of the large-scale geochemical provinces found on the Moon today are strongly linked to the impact that created South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin. This basin has a topographic rim about 2500 km in diameter, an inner shelf 400 - 600 km in width, and an irregular depressed floor at an elevation about 12 km below the rim crest. Topographically high regions surround the SPA basin and are especially pronounced to the north and east; models also show very high levels of crustal thickness in those areas and relatively thin crust beneath the basin. Multispectral images of the Moon were returned by the Galileo and Clementine spacecraft. An enhancement in mafic materials in the SPA interior was noted. Methods were derived that use Clementine UVVIS data to quantify the iron and titanium content of lunar surface materials and, in addition to confirming the enhanced FeO content in the basin interior, noted that regions in the far northern farside are extremely low in FeO. This indicates extensive exposures of anorthosite. More recently, the Lunar Prospector spacecraft returned GRS data that are being used to produce elemental abundance maps. Preliminary thorium maps have been produced, and iron maps are also being produced using techniques totally independent from those used with the Clementine data.

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