THE GEOLOGY OF THE SOUTH POLE OF THE MOON AND AGE OF SHACKLETON CRATER. Paul

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aitken; Shackleton; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.610.2626; http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2008/pdf/1626.pdf

The south pole of the Moon is located in the rugged, heavily cratered terrain of the southern highlands [1]. Because the lunar spin axis is oriented about 1.5º from a normal to the ecliptic, sunlight is always at low incidence at the poles, creating both a unique environment and some difficulty in geological interpretation of the region. Newly obtained ra-dar images of the lunar south pole permit us to observe sev-eral areas of this region that are in permanent sun shadow [2]. Together with earlier data for the poles from the orbital Clementine and Lunar Prospector missions [3-5], we now have an abundance of information on the geology and envi-ronment of the south pole. Geological setting of the south pole. The dominant feature in the south polar region is the enormous South Pole-Aitken basin, one of the largest and oldest impact basins on the