New Constraints on the Young Lava Flow Profile in the Northern Mare Imbrium

Abstract

Previous studies showed that the Eratosthenian mare (Em) unit in the northern Mare Imbrium, which is the location of the Chang'e‐3 (CE3) landing site, was simply formed by one period of thick lava flow. However, the CE3 Yutu rover equipped with lunar penetrating radar (LPR) recognized multilayered Em basalts based on the Channel 1 data reprocessed in this paper, indicating that three subdivided thin Eratosthenian lava flows should exist. The spatial variation and thickness distribution of each layer are further estimated based on the location of interfaces recognized from the shallow radar profile. Finally, we build a three‐dimensional stratigraphic model of young mare basalts with filling directions beneath the Chang'e‐3 landing site. The result infers that these young lava flows in the northern Mare Imbrium probably erupted intermittently from the same source.

Some Lava Flows May Not Have Been as Thick as They Appear

“…In particular, there are many mare basalt flows with an average thickness of 25-40 m (Chen et al, 2018;Morota et al, 2011;Hiesinger et al, 2002). However, flow thickness is typically ∼ 10 m (Yuan et al, 2020;Chen et al, 2018;Enns & Robinson, 2013). Thus, similar to Earth's CFBs (Self et al, 2021), there may be a population of thick mare basalt flows that are the product of fusing.…”