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| A small crater hides a bench of bedrock within its walls. Boulders sit just outside the rim. LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) observation M162447033R, LRO orbit 9074, June 11, 2011; 78° angle of incidence, resolution 0.78 meters per pixel, image field of view 800 meters across from 37.5 km [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]. |
LROC News System
Today's Featured Image shows a bench crater in the lunar mare. Bench craters are so called because they have a small bench lining the interior of the crater wall. In fact, this bench is interpreted to be the contact between the bottom of the regolith and the basaltic bedrock below.
The regolith is a layer of brecciated material that develops as a result of micrometeorite bombardment, it consists mostly of a fine powder containing numerous angular fragments.
The regolith and the coherent basalt both have different strengths, with the regolith being easier to displace than the underlying basalt during an impact event. The result of a moderate impact (in this case one that produced a 160 meter diameter crater) into this area then gave us a spectacular view of the local stratigraphy.
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| Another Narrow Angle Camera view of the unnamed crater of interest in Mare Imbrium, from a higher altitude later in the LRO mission. LROC NAC frame M190738110R, orbit 13152, May 4, 2012; 52.37° incidence angle, resolution 1.44 meters from 145.83 km [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]. |
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| Context LROC Lunaserv view showing the location of the small unnamed crater of interest, east-southeast of McDonald crater in Mare Imbrium. The bench crater is near the center of Mare Imbrium at 30.165° N, 339.493°E. Image width is 100 km [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]. |
Can you find any more bench craters in the full LROC NAC, HERE?
Related Posts:
New Impact Crater on the Moon!
Regolith on Basalt
Fresh Bench Crater in Oceanus Procellarum
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