Geology of Shackleton Crater and the south pole of the

[1] Using new SMART-1 AMIE images and Arecibo and Goldstone high resolution radar images of the Moon, we investigate the geological relations of the south pole, including the 20 km-diameter crater Shackleton. The south pole is located inside the topographic rim of the South PoleAitken (SPA) basin, t...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: P D Spudis, B Bussey, J Plescia, J.-L Josset, S Beauvivre
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2008
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1087.9769
http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Bibliography/p/93.pdf
Description
Summary:[1] Using new SMART-1 AMIE images and Arecibo and Goldstone high resolution radar images of the Moon, we investigate the geological relations of the south pole, including the 20 km-diameter crater Shackleton. The south pole is located inside the topographic rim of the South PoleAitken (SPA) basin, the largest and oldest impact crater on the Moon and Shackleton is located on the edge of an interior basin massif. The crater Shackleton is found to be older than the mare surface of the Apollo 15 landing site (3.3 Ga), but younger than the Apollo 14 landing site (3.85 Ga). These results suggest that Shackleton may have collected extra-lunar volatile elements for at least the last 2 billion years and is an attractive site for permanent human presence on the Moon.