ESA - Space Science - SMART-1 diagnoses wrinkles and excess weight on the Moon

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Article Images

SMART-1 diagnoses wrinkles and excess weight on the Moon

22 August 2007

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This is a SMART-1 AMIE image mosaic of the edge of Mare Humorum. It shows basalt deposits to the right and graben, or elongated, trench-like erosional fault structures, around the basin.

The images were taken from a distance of 1070 km, centred at 46° West and 27° South. The overall image field measures 200 x 130 km.

Credits: ESA/Space-X (Space Exploration Institute)

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Mare Humorum (green) and Oceanus Procellarum (red)

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The positions of Mare Humorum (in green) and Oceanus Procellarum (in red) are indicated on a Mercator map of the Moon centred on the near-side.

Credits: ESA/Space-X (Space Exploration Institute)

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This is an image mosaic of pictures taken by SMART-1’s AMIE camera. It shows a part of the Humorum basin showing graben features or elongated, trench-like erosional features. The size of individual images is 50 km.

Credits: ESA/Space-X (Space Exploration Institute)

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This is a SMART-1 AMIE image of a part of the Humorum basin showing strike slip faults (indicated in the right panel) and tectonic wrinkles due to crust deformation around a basin mascon (mass concentration or ‘local overweight’).

Credits: ESA/Space-X (Space Exploration Institute)

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This image shows graben features (red), strike slip faults (green) and wrinkle ridges (blue) as determined with SMART-1 AMIE in a context Clementine image of the Humorum basin.

Graben features are elongated, trench-like erosional structures which form as the crust is deformed due to the presence of a mascon (mass concentration or 'local overweight').

Strike-slip faults are faults where the rupture is vertical and one side slides past the other. An example is the San Andreas fault along the western United States, however there is no multi-plate tectonic activity on the Moon.

Wrinkle ridges in the Humorum basin are believed to be caused by thermo-mechanical deformation of the mare basalts, rather than mascon tectonics (due to mass concentration, or local 'overweight').

Credits: NASA/ Clementine

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This Clementine image shows wrinkle ridges detected with SMART-1 in the Procellarum basin.

The wrinkle ridges are not distributed radially around the basin. Due to their location, they do not seem associated with mass concentration tectonics, but mostly are results of thermal and mechanical deformations resulting from volcanic activity - due to compression from basalt extruded by the lava. The Procellarum basin contains the youngest basalt found on the Moon so far, up to two thousand million years old.

Credits: NASA/ Clementine

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This picture shows the craters Hansteen (top) and Billy (bottom), both lying in the Procellarum basin. Billy is an example of a crater flooded due to volcanic activity, whereas Hansteen remains unflooded. The craters are 45 km in diameter.

Credits: ESA/Space-X (Space Exploration Institute)

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