Moonrise: Sampling the South Pole-aitken Basin to Address Problems of Solar System Significance

Science Options for Sampling South Pole-aitken Basin

Introduction: Sample return from the huge South Pole-Aitken basin is one of the highest priority science missions recommend by the NRC/NAS for solar system exploration by NASA’s New Frontiers program, second only to Kuiper Belt/Pluto exploration [1]. The envisioned SPA mission is to address several key science issues concerning early evolution of solid bodies in the solar system. Since the Moon...

Constraining Solar System impact history and evolution of the terrestrial planets with exploration of and samples from the Moon’s South Pole-Aitken Basin A white-paper submitted for consideration by the NRC Planetary Science Decadal Survey, Inner Planets Panel

Potential Sample Sites for South Pole–aitken Basin Impact Melt within the Schrödinger Basin

anomaly that coincides with the SPA interioris exposed in the eastern and southeastern portion of this basin. This FeOenriched signature is interpreted to represent SPA-derived material, and samples collected within this region may be analyzed to determine the age of the oldest basin preserved on the Moon. Red and pink pixels indicate the presence of pyroxene and plagioclase [10], a signature t...

Volumes of lunar lava ponds in South Pole-Aitken and Orientale Basins: Implications for eruption conditions, transport mechanisms, and magma source regions

In an effort to characterize individual eruptive phases and events, 86 isolated mare deposits (ponds) in the lunar South Pole-Aitken and Orientale regions were analyzed to obtain information on areas, volumes, and other characteristics. Deposits likely to represent single eruptive episodes have area mean values of-2000 km 2 in the South Pole-Aitken Basin and -1100 km 2 in the Orientale Basin. P...

Elliptical structure of the lunar South Pole-Aitken basin

The South Pole-Aitken basin (SP-A) is the largest and oldest basin on the Moon. The basin has usually been interpreted to exhibit a degraded circular structure, but here we demonstrate that the topography, iron and thorium signatures of the basin are well described by ellipses with axes measuring 2400 by 2050 km and centered at 53 , 191 E. Topography, abundances of iron, thorium, and the distri...