Subsurface morphology and scaling of lunar impact basins

Impact bombardment during the first billion years after the formation of the Moon produced at least several tens of basins. The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission mapped the gravity field of these impact structures at significantly higher spatial resolution than previous missions, allowing for detailed subsurface and morphological analyses to be made across the entire globe. GRAIL-derived crustal thickness maps were used to define the regions of crustal thinning observed in centers of lunar impact basins, which represents a less unambiguous measure of a basin size than those based on topographic features. The formation of lunar impact basins was modeled numerically by using the iSALE-2D hydrocode, with a large range of impact and target conditions typical for the first billion years of lunar evolution. In the investigated range of impactor and target conditions, the target temperature had the dominant effect on the basin subsurface morphology. Model results were also used to update current impact scaling relationships applicable to the lunar setting (based on assumed target temperature). Our new temperature-dependent impact-scaling relationships provide estimates of impact conditions and transient crater diameters for the majority of impact basins mapped by GRAIL. As the formation of lunar impact basins is associated with the first ~700 Myr of the solar system evolution when the impact flux was considerably larger than the present day, our revised impact scaling relationships can aid further analyses and understanding of the extent of impact bombardment on the Moon and terrestrial planets in the early solar system

Asymmetric craters on Vesta: Impact on sloping surfaces

Cratering processes on planetary bodies happen continuously and cause the formation of a large variety of impact crater morphologies. On Vesta whose surface has been imaged at high resolution during a 14 months orbital mission by the Dawn spacecraft we identified a substantial number of craters with an asymmetrical shape. These craters, in total a number of 2892 ranging in diameter from 0.3 km to 43 km, are characterized by a sharp crater rim on the uphill side and a smooth one on the downhill side. The formation of these unusual asymmetric impact craters is controlled by Vesta׳s remarkable topographic relief. In order to understand the processes creating such unusual crater forms on a planetary body with a topography like Vesta we carried out the following work packages: (1) the asymmetric craters show various morphologies and therefore can be subdivided into distinct classes by their specific morphologic details; (2) using a digital terrain model (DTM), the craters are grouped into bins of slope angles for further statistical analysis; (3) for a subset of these asymmetric craters, the size-frequency distributions of smaller craters superimposed on their crater floors and continuous ejecta are measured in order to derive cratering model ages for the selected craters and to constrain possible post-impact processes; (4) three-dimensional hydrocode simulations using the iSALE-3D code are applied to the data set in order to quantify the effects of topography on crater shape and ejecta distribution. We identified five different classes (A–E) of asymmetric craters. Primarily, we focus on class A in this work. The global occurrence of these crater classes compared with a slope map clearly shows that these asymmetric crater types exclusively form on slopes. We found that slopes, especially slopes >20°, prevent the deposition of ejected material in the uphill direction, and slumping material superimposed the deposit of ejecta on the downhill side. The combination of these two processes explains the local accumulation of material in this direction. In the subset of asymmetric craters which we used for crater counts, our results show that no post-impact processes have taken place since floors and continuous ejecta in each crater show comparable cratering model ages within the uncertainties of the cratering chronology model. Therefore the formation, or modification, of the asymmetric crater forms by processes other than impact can be excluded with some certainty