Chain of Elliptical Craters on the Moon (wide & detail)

Filed under pretty pictures, the Moon, NASA lunar missions before 2005, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, geology

Go Back

Chain of Elliptical Craters on the Moon (wide & detail)

Contiguous elliptical craters form a discontinuous rille. This is a small segment of an LROC observation made on July 17, 2009, less than a month after its launch. At the time, the spacecraft was in its preliminary orbit, higher above the lunar surface than its planned science orbit, so at its full resolution LROC got 1.55 meters per pixel on the surface here, about three times poorer than its eventual science images. This context image has been downsampled to 10 meters per pixel.

NASA / GSFC / ASU

Here is a view of the same area from Lunar Orbiter:

NASA

Discontinuous rille on the Moon

Contiguous elliptical craters form a discontinuous rille. From Lunar Orbiter Photograph V-182M. (Figure VIII-6 in Thomas A. Mutch's Geology of the Moon.)

And here is a full-resolution detail view from the LROC image.