Craters, Old and New

Unnamed craters on the western edge of Mare Frigoris. 1.65 kilometer-wide field of view from LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) frame M186056576L, centered on 56.579°N, 334.890°E. Captured during LRO orbit 12497, March 10, 2012, resolution 1.66 meters per pixel from 168.15 kilometers [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Hiroyuki Sato
LROC News System

Today's (Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - LROC) Featured Image highlights contrasting features of a young (lower right) and old (upper left) crater with nearly the same diameters (about 450 meters). These two craters are found in the western portion of Mare Frigoris, 23 kilometers south of La Condamine S.

The walls of of the younger crater are steeper with a small, nearly flat floor, probably from pooled impact melt. The older crater appears much shallower and flatter due to an extensive amount of infilling. This type of degraded flat-floored crater is common on the maria.

Many of the craters in this area appear to have roughly the same amount of infilling. Why? Perhaps a local resurfacing event occurred, meaning the infill could either be a product of volcanic activity or impact ejecta. If we visit one of these infilled craters and dig a trench or two we could determine whether this infilling material is volcanic or impact ejecta.

Surrounding areas of La Condamine S crater in LROC WAC 100 meter/pixel mosaic on LOLA laser altimetry using NASA Lunar Modeling and Mapping Project (LMMP) application ILIADS. The long footprint of the entire LROC NAC observation from March 2012 is shown along with the much smaller field of view at high-resolution at the beginning of this post [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Explore the contrasting young/old craters and surrounding area in the full NAC frame HERE.

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Montes Pyrenaeus meets Mare Nectaris
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