Identification and characterization of science-rich landing sites for lunar lander missions using integrated remote sensing observations

Volcanism on farside of the Moon: New evidence from Antoniadi in South Pole Aitken basin

“…Antoniadi basin is one of the exciting future potential landing sites on the farside of the Moon, which has not yet been studied by any rovers or astronauts. The lunar highlands and the SPA basin include major attractions for landing sites (Mimoun et al, 2012;Flahaut et al, 2012), because both of them provide a complete spectrum of lunar crustal and possibly mantle rocks for direct analysis. Here, we suggest the mare region of Antoniadi as a possible landing site for studying the petrogenesis of the young mare basalts as one of its goals.…”

Compositional Variations in the Vicinity of the Lunar Crust‐Mantle Interface From Moon Mineralogy Mapper Data

“…The proximity to the crust-mantle interface (or material now exposed in a crater's central peak) was defined by Cahill et al (2009) as the difference between the crustal thickness and the peak material depth of origin. The preimpact crustal thickness was calculated following the method in Flahaut et al (2012), averaging the crustal thickness around the considered impact crater (from the Wieczorek et al, 2013, crustal thickness models) at a distance of one crater diameter, ±10% of the crater diameter. The maximum depth of melting (D m ) was used to determine the minimum depth of origin of central peak material (Cintala & Grieve, 1998).…”

“…Therefore, the P cmi values symbolize the distance between the putative crust-mantle interface and the depth of origin of a crater's central peak material (see the Figure 1 from Flahaut et al, 2012). If the P cmi value is negative, material from below the crust-mantle interface was potentially sampled by the impact-forming event and emplaced in the resulting crater's central peak.…”

“…The maximum depth of melting (D m ) was used to determine the minimum depth of origin of central peak material (Cintala & Grieve, 1998). The preimpact crustal thickness was calculated following the method in Flahaut et al (2012), averaging the crustal thickness around the considered impact crater (from the Wieczorek et al, 2013, crustal thickness models) at a distance of one crater diameter, ±10% of the crater diameter.…”

Robotic traverse and sample return strategies for a lunar farside mission to the Schrödinger basin

“…These objectives are broadly consistent with those identified throughout the international community (e.g., Crawford et al, 2012), with the majority requiring sample return from the Moon. From 2008 to 2012, a series of studies determined the most suitable locations on the Moon where each of the scientific concepts, and their sub-goals, could be investigated (O'Sullivan et al, 2011;Flahaut et al, 2012;Kring and Durda, 2012;Lemelin et al, 2014). These studies highlighted Schrö dinger basin as a geologically-rich location where the majority of the NRC (2007) goals could be addressed (Tables 1 and 2).…”