Gravity field of the Orientale basin from the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory Mission
- Creators
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Zuber, Maria T.
- Smith, D. E.
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Neumann, G. A.
- Goossens, S.
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Andrews-Hanna, J. C.
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Head, J. W.
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Kiefer, W. S.
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Asmar, Sami W.
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Konopliv, Alexander S.
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Lemoine, F. G.
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Matsuyama, I.
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Melosh, H. J.
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McGovern, P. J.
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Nimmo, F.
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Phillips, R. J.
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Solomon, S. C.
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Taylor, G. J.
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Watkins, Michael M.
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Wieczorek, M. A.
- Williams, James G.
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Jansen, J. C.
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Johnson, B. C.
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Keane, J. T.
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Mazarico, E.
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Miljković, K.
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Park, Ryan S.
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Soderblom, J. M.
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Yuan, Dah-Ning
Abstract
The Orientale basin is the youngest and best-preserved major impact structure on the Moon. We used the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft to investigate the gravitational field of Orientale at 3- to 5-kilometer (km) horizontal resolution. A volume of at least (3.4 ± 0.2) × 106 km3 of crustal material was removed and redistributed during basin formation. There is no preserved evidence of the transient crater that would reveal the basin's maximum volume, but its diameter may now be inferred to be between 320 and 460 km. The gravity field resolves distinctive structures of Orientale's three rings and suggests the presence of faults associated with the outer two that penetrate to the mantle. The crustal structure of Orientale provides constraints on the formation of multiring basins.
Additional Information
The GRAIL mission is supported by NASA's Discovery Program and is performed under contract to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Topography was obtained from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter on the Lunar Reconnaissance Mission, managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The NASA Pleiades and Center for Climate Simulation supercomputers were used to compute the gravity solutions. All data used in this study are archived in the Geosciences Node of the NASA Planetary Data System at http://geo.pds.nasa.gov/missions/grail/default.htm.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 119689
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20230307-21967000.8
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- Created
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2023-03-08Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-10-25Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, GALCIT