Project Summary

More than 3 billion years ago, large-scale impacts were formed on the lunar surface, giving the night time attraction its admirable features. These impacts were formed from space debris, asteroids, and comets which shaped basins and craters. Large impact basins became filled with magma, which ascended from beneath the surface and filled low lying areas. Located on the farside is the South Pole Aitken Basin (SPA), the largest impact basin on the moon. My study concentrates on craters within the SPA and compares materials that were excavated to materials at the surface. This comparison includes a compositional analysis of excavated materials versus surface materials. An open source database from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Quickmaps, was used to measure the mineral abundances of craters using live satellite imagery, nomenclature, topographic maps, and mineral abundance percentages from the Kaguya satellite. After analyzing plagioclase, orthopyroxene, olivine, iron oxide, and clinopyroxene abundances, a significant difference was discovered between fresh and filled craters. Typical, fresh craters have floors that are higher in clinopyroxene than its rims and walls while craters with high volcanic flooding material have rims and walls that are higher in clinopyroxene.