NASA Spacecraft Reveals Recent Geological Activity on the Moon
The largest of the newly detected graben found in highlands of the lunar farside. The broadest graben is about 500 m wide and topography derived from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) stereo images indicates they are almost 20 m deep.
Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University/Smithsonian Institution
A series of graben in a patch of mare basalts that occupy a valley south of Mare Humorum cut across and deformed several small diameter impact craters. The walls and floors of the graben crosscut a degraded 27 m diameter crater (inset, upper white arrow) and a 7 m diameter crater (inset, lower white arrow). Since small craters only have a limited lifetime before they are destroyed by other impacts, their deformation by graben indicates that these fault-bound troughs are relatively young.
Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University/Smithsonian Institution
Newly detected series of narrow linear troughs are known as graben, and they fomed in highland materials on lunar farside. Forces acting to pull the lunar crust apart formed the Virtanen graben, informally named for a nearby impact crater. These graben are located on a topographic rise with several hundred meters of relief revealed in topography derived from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) stereo images (blues are lower elevations and reds are higher elevations). The rise is flanked by the rim of a ~2.5 km diameter degraded crater.
Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University/Smithsonian Institution
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Writer
- William Steigerwald (NASA/GSFC)
Video editor
- Dan Gallagher (KBRwyle)
Scientists
- Richard Vondrak (NASA/GSFC)
- Tom Watters (Smithsonian/Air and Space)
Interviewee
- Tom Watters (Smithsonian/Air and Space)
Producer
- Dan Gallagher (KBRwyle)
Videographer
- Rob Andreoli (AIMM)
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Related pages
Shrinking, Growing Moon
April 4, 2012, 8 p.m.
Read moreLeft for dead, geologically speaking, the moon is showing signs of more recent life. True-color and false-color images show one of the lunar valleys in sharp detail. Explore what the discovery of these lunar valleys tells us about the moon s surface. For More InformationSee [NASA.gov](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/lunar-graben.html)