A Large Basin on the Near Side of the Moon

The Moon's Near Side Megabasin and Far Side Bulge

“…Earlier radial elevation profiles (Byrne 2007) were based on the Clementine 1° or 1/4° DEM but the ones reported here are based on the Kaguya 1° or 1/16° DEM. The increased coverage and resolution of the Kaguya data led to the discovery of several new features, leading to a complete model of the Moon covering features larger than 200 km in diameter.…”

“…and searching for the combination that would minimize the standard deviation of the differences between the resulting model and the Clementine DEM. The result was the discovery of the NSM (Byrne 2007). The addition of the NSM and refinement of the parameters of the South Pole-Aitken Basin led to the discovery of several new features (described in Chap.…”

“…Fortunately for us it has been decreasing to a small but still hazardous rate. Each collision is chaotic, yet the statistical properties of ensembles of events are regular and subject to quantitative analysis and modeling (Croft 1980;Housen et al 1983;Byrne 2007).…”

“…3 and the models of basins and large craters shown in Table 4.3, the search for new megabasins was successful. Two new megabasins, the Near Side Megabasin (NSM) (Byrne 2006(Byrne , 2007(Byrne , 2008 and the Chaplygin-Mandel'shtam Basin (CM) were found (Byrne 2012) and new parameters were established for the South Pole-Aitken Basin (SPA).…”

Internal Structure/Mantle Motions of the Moon

“…A locally thicker crust on the farside would give rise to a thinner underlying magma ocean, and thus concentrate KREEP-rich materials on the nearside, where the crust is thinnest. This model requires an initially thicker crust on the farside, possibly caused by a giant impact on the nearside (Neumann et al 1996;Byrne 2007), or a global convection pattern within the magma ocean that could have transported the crust preferentially to the farside (Loper and Werner 2002).…”