Published October 28, 2016 | Version public
Journal Article

Gravity field of the Orientale basin from the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory Mission

  • 1. ROR icon Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon Goddard Space Flight Center
  • 3. ROR icon University of Maryland, Baltimore
  • 4. ROR icon Colorado School of Mines
  • 5. ROR icon Brown University
  • 6. ROR icon Lunar and Planetary Institute
  • 7. ROR icon Jet Propulsion Lab
  • 8. ROR icon University of Arizona
  • 9. ROR icon Purdue University West Lafayette
  • 10. ROR icon University of California, Santa Cruz
  • 11. ROR icon Southwest Research Institute
  • 12. ROR icon Carnegie Institution for Science
  • 13. ROR icon University of Hawaii at Manoa
  • 14. ROR icon University of Paris
  • 15. ROR icon Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris

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

Identifiers

Eprint ID
119689
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20230307-21967000.8

Funding

NASA/JPL/Caltech

Dates

Created
2023-03-08
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Updated
2023-10-25
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