ALBERT

Description: The Procellarum region is a broad area on the nearside of the Moon that is characterized by low elevations, thin crust, and high surface concentrations of the heat-producing elements uranium, thorium, and potassium. The region has been interpreted as an ancient impact basin approximately 3,200 kilometres in diameter, although supporting evidence at the surface would have been largely obscured as a result of the great antiquity and poor preservation of any diagnostic features. Here we use data from the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission to examine the subsurface structure of Procellarum. The Bouguer gravity anomalies and gravity gradients reveal a pattern of narrow linear anomalies that border Procellarum and are interpreted to be the frozen remnants of lava-filled rifts and the underlying feeder dykes that served as the magma plumbing system for much of the nearside mare volcanism. The discontinuous surface structures that were earlier interpreted as remnants of an impact basin rim are shown in GRAIL data to be a part of this continuous set of border structures in a quasi-rectangular pattern with angular intersections, contrary to the expected circular or elliptical shape of an impact basin. The spatial pattern of magmatic-tectonic structures bounding Procellarum is consistent with their formation in response to thermal stresses produced by the differential cooling of the province relative to its surroundings, coupled with magmatic activity driven by the greater-than-average heat flux in the region.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Andrews-Hanna, Jeffrey C -- Besserer, Jonathan -- Head, James W 3rd -- Howett, Carly J A -- Kiefer, Walter S -- Lucey, Paul J -- McGovern, Patrick J -- Melosh, H Jay -- Neumann, Gregory A -- Phillips, Roger J -- Schenk, Paul M -- Smith, David E -- Solomon, Sean C -- Zuber, Maria T -- England -- Nature. 2014 Oct 2;514(7520):68-71. doi: 10.1038/nature13697.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Geophysics and Center for Space Resources, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado 80401, USA. ; Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA. ; Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912, USA. ; Planetary Science Directorate, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado 80302, USA. ; Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, Texas 77058, USA. ; Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA. ; Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA. ; Solar System Exploration Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA. ; Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139-4307, USA. ; 1] Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington DC 20015, USA [2] Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, New York 10964, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25279919" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: Shackleton crater is nearly coincident with the Moon's south pole. Its interior receives almost no direct sunlight and is a perennial cold trap, making Shackleton a promising candidate location in which to seek sequestered volatiles. However, previous orbital and Earth-based radar mapping and orbital optical imaging have yielded conflicting interpretations about the existence of volatiles. Here we present observations from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, revealing Shackleton to be an ancient, unusually well-preserved simple crater whose interior walls are fresher than its floor and rim. Shackleton floor deposits are nearly the same age as the rim, suggesting that little floor deposition has occurred since the crater formed more than three billion years ago. At a wavelength of 1,064 nanometres, the floor of Shackleton is brighter than the surrounding terrain and the interiors of nearby craters, but not as bright as the interior walls. The combined observations are explicable primarily by downslope movement of regolith on the walls exposing fresher underlying material. The relatively brighter crater floor is most simply explained by decreased space weathering due to shadowing, but a one-micrometre-thick layer containing about 20 per cent surficial ice is an alternative possibility.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Zuber, Maria T -- Head, James W -- Smith, David E -- Neumann, Gregory A -- Mazarico, Erwan -- Torrence, Mark H -- Aharonson, Oded -- Tye, Alexander R -- Fassett, Caleb I -- Rosenburg, Margaret A -- Melosh, H Jay -- England -- Nature. 2012 Jun 20;486(7403):378-81. doi: 10.1038/nature11216.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA. zuber@mit.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22722197" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: The most heavily cratered terrains on Mercury have been estimated to be about 4 billion years (Gyr) old, but this was based on images of only about 45 per cent of the surface; even older regions could have existed in the unobserved portion. These terrains have a lower density of craters less than 100 km in diameter than does the Moon, an observation attributed to preferential resurfacing on Mercury. Here we report global crater statistics of Mercury's most heavily cratered terrains on the entire surface. Applying a recent model for early lunar crater chronology and an updated dynamical extrapolation to Mercury, we find that the oldest surfaces were emplaced just after the start of the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) about 4.0-4.1 Gyr ago. Mercury's global record of large impact basins, which has hitherto not been dated, yields a similar surface age. This agreement implies that resurfacing was global and was due to volcanism, as previously suggested. This activity ended during the tail of the LHB, within about 300-400 million years after the emplacement of the oldest terrains on Mercury. These findings suggest that persistent volcanism could have been aided by the surge of basin-scale impacts during this bombardment.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Marchi, Simone -- Chapman, Clark R -- Fassett, Caleb I -- Head, James W -- Bottke, W F -- Strom, Robert G -- England -- Nature. 2013 Jul 4;499(7456):59-61. doi: 10.1038/nature12280.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉NASA Lunar Science Institute, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado 80302, USA. marchi@boulder.swri.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23823793" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: Mars is the only planet other than Earth in the Solar System that has a preserved nonpolar geological record of glaciation on its surface. Nonpolar ice deposits on Mars have been linked to variations in spin-axis obliquity that cause mobilization of polar ice and redeposition at lower latitudes, forming ice-rich and glacial deposits. Remnant nonpolar glacial deposits are found across the northern mid-latitudes where surface ice is not currently stable, implying that different climatic conditions existed on Mars in the past. Individual glacial deposits are often too small to date reliably using impact crater size-frequency data. We describe a novel approach that allows us to derive new information about when glaciation occurred in broad areas of the northern mid-latitudes. In this region we have classified (1) craters that superpose preexisting glacial deposits and were modified by later accumulation (and therefore formed during an epoch when glaciation was occurring), and (2) craters that are superposed on glacial deposits but are themselves unmodified by ice accumulation (and thus post-date significant glaciation). The sparse population of post-glacial craters reveals that the last period of extensive ice deposition of this type in this latitude band was recent (Late Amazonian). The substantial number of craters formed during the recurring glacial periods implies that northern mid-latitude glaciation was a long-lived recurring process, occurring over a period of at least ~600 m.y. On the basis of Mars atmospheric general circulation models, these results are consistent with higher obliquity being common in the past, with recurring periods of obliquity exceeding the 25° axial tilt of Mars today. These observations support the statistical prediction of J. Laskar and colleagues that the median obliquity during the Amazonian was ~35°–40°.

Description: Images acquired by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft have revealed the morphology of frozen volatiles in Mercury’s permanently shadowed polar craters and provide insight into the mode of emplacement and evolution of the polar deposits. The images show extensive, spatially continuous regions with distinctive reflectance properties. A site within Prokofiev crater identified as containing widespread surface water ice exhibits a cratered texture that resembles the neighboring sunlit surface except for its uniformly higher reflectance, indicating that the surficial ice was emplaced after formation of the underlying craters. In areas where water ice is inferred to be present but covered by a thin layer of dark, organic-rich volatile material, regions with uniformly lower reflectance extend to the edges of the shadowed areas and terminate with sharp boundaries. The sharp boundaries indicate that the volatile deposits at Mercury’s poles are geologically young, relative to the time scale for lateral mixing by impacts, and either are restored at the surface through an ongoing process or were delivered to the planet recently.

Description: Orbital images of Mercury obtained by the MESSENGER spacecraft have revealed families of troughs, interpreted to be graben, on volcanic plains material that largely or completely buried preexisting craters and basins. The graben are partially to fully encircled by rings of contractional wrinkle ridges localized over the rims of the buried impact features to form systems of associated contractional and extensional landforms. Most of the buried craters and basins with graben identified to date are located in the extensive volcanic plains that cover much of Mercury’s northern high latitudes. The distinctive relationship between wrinkle ridges and graben in buried craters and basins on Mercury is interpreted to be the result of a combination of extensional stresses from cooling and thermal contraction of thick lava flow units and compressional stresses from cooling and contraction of the planet’s interior.