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

Maria T Zuber; David E Smith; Gregory A Neumann; Sander Goossens; Jeffrey C Andrews-Hanna; James W Head; Walter S Kiefer; Sami W Asmar; Alexander S Konopliv; Frank G Lemoine; Isamu Matsuyama; H Jay Melosh; Patrick J McGovern; Francis Nimmo; Roger J Phillips; Sean C Solomon; G Jeffrey Taylor; Michael M Watkins; Mark A Wieczorek; James G Williams; Johanna C Jansen; Brandon C Johnson; James T Keane; Erwan Mazarico; Katarina Miljković; Ryan S Park; Jason M Soderblom; Dah-Ning Yuan

doi:10.1126/science.aag0519

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

Science. 2016 Oct 28;354(6311):438-441. doi: 10.1126/science.aag0519. Epub 2016 Oct 27.

Authors

Maria T Zuber¹, David E Smith², Gregory A Neumann³, Sander Goossens⁴, Jeffrey C Andrews-Hanna⁵, James W Head⁶, Walter S Kiefer⁷, Sami W Asmar⁸, Alexander S Konopliv⁸, Frank G Lemoine³, Isamu Matsuyama⁹, H Jay Melosh¹⁰, Patrick J McGovern⁷, Francis Nimmo¹¹, Roger J Phillips¹², Sean C Solomon¹³, G Jeffrey Taylor¹⁴, Michael M Watkins¹⁵, Mark A Wieczorek¹⁶, James G Williams⁸, Johanna C Jansen¹⁷, Brandon C Johnson¹⁸, James T Keane⁹, Erwan Mazarico³, Katarina Miljković¹⁹, Ryan S Park⁸, Jason M Soderblom², Dah-Ning Yuan⁸

Affiliations

¹ Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307, USA. zuber@mit.edu.
² Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307, USA.
³ Solar System Exploration Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
⁴ Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science and Technology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA.
⁵ Department of Geophysics and Center for Space Resources, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO 80401, USA. Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO 80302, USA.
⁶ Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
⁷ Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, TX 77058, USA.
⁸ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA.
⁹ Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721-0092, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA.
¹¹ Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
¹² Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO 80302, USA.
¹³ Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, DC 20015, USA. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, USA.
¹⁴ Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.
¹⁵ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA. Center for Space Research, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712 USA.
¹⁶ Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Université Paris Diderot, 75205 Paris Cedex 13, France.
¹⁷ Department of Geophysics and Center for Space Resources, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO 80401, USA.
¹⁸ Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307, USA. Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
¹⁹ Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307, USA. Department of Applied Geology, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia 6845, Australia.

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.

Grants and funding

SCMD-PlanetaryScience/Science Planetary Science NASA/United States