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Science 31 January 1992:
Vol. 255. no. 5044, pp. 570 - 576
DOI: 10.1126/science.255.5044.570
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Articles
Lunar Impact Basins and Crustal Heterogeneity: New Western Limb and Far Side Data from Galileo
MICHAEL J. S. BELTON 1,
JAMES W. HEAD III 2,
CARLE M. PIETERS 2,
RONALD GREELEY 3,
ALFRED S. MCEWEN 4,
GERHARD NEUKUM 5,
KENNETH P. KLAASEN 6,
CLIFFORD D. ANGER 7,
MICHAEL H. CARR 8,
CLARK R. CHAPMAN 9,
MERTON E. DAVIES 10,
FRASER P. FANALE 11,
PETER J. GIERASCH 12,
RICHARD GREENBERG 13,
ANDREW P. INGERSOLL 14,
TORRENCE JOHNSON 6,
BRIAN PACZKOWSKI 6,
CARL B. PILCHER 15, and
JOSEPH VEVERKA 12
1 National Optical Astronomy Observatories, Tucson, AZ 85719
2 Brown University, Providence, RI 02912
3 Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281
4 U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, AZ 86001
5 DLR, 8031 Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany
6 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA 91109
7 ITRES Research, Ltd., Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2E 7H7
8 U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA 94025
9 Planetary Science Institute, SAIC, Tucson, AZ 85719
10 RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA 90406
11 University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822
12 Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
13 University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721
14 California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125
15 NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC 20546
Multispectral images of the lunar western limb and far side obtained from Galileo reveal the compositional nature of several prominent lunar features and provide new information on lunar evolution. The data reveal that the ejecta from the Orientale impact basin (900 kilometers in diameter) lying outside the Cordillera Mountains was excavated from the crust, not the mantle, and covers pre-Orientale terrain that consisted of both highland materials and relatively large expanses of ancient mare basalts. The inside of the far side South Pole—Aitken basin (>2000 kilometers in diameter) has low albedo, red color, and a relatively high abundance of iron- and magnesium-rich materials. These features suggest that the impact may have penetrated into the deep crust or lunar mantle or that the basin contains ancient mare basalts that were later covered by highlands ejecta.
Submitted on August 30, 1991
Accepted on December 11, 1991
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