Publications

More than four-fifths of the surface of the Moon consists of a profoundly cratered irregular surface designated terra or highlands by analogy with the terrestrial continents. These terra regions have much higher albedos than the physiographically lower and much smoother mare regions. The difference in albedo can now be ascribed to a fundamental difference in the chemical and...

The purpose of the infrared (IR) and radar study of the Apollo data is to establish lunar surface conditions in the vicinity of the orbital tracks of the Apollo command modules during the J-series missions. Correlations and comparisons between the Earth-based radar observations, IR observations, and other data will be plotted on photomaps produced from the mapping and panoramic cameras...

Details of the ejecta blankets of large, fresh craters provide insight into the mechanics of deposition and the sequence of emplacement of impact debris. King Crater is the freshest of the three large, rayed craters photographed from Apollo 16; the others are Theophilus and Langrenus Craters. King Crater is comparable in youth to Tycho Crater, and the details of its ejecta blanket help...

Low-relief mare features such as ridges and arches are best studied by using stereoscopic photographs taken at low Sun angles. Apollo 16 metric camera photography of the southern Oceanus Procellarum east of Letronne Crater reveals a diversity of subtle features (fig. 29-125) and adds significantly to an understanding of the forms of mare ridges and arches their relative ages, and their...

The metric and panoramic cameras aboard the Apollo 16 spacecraft provided photographs on which photogrammetric techniques may be used to obtain precise measurements of horizontal distances and elevations. These measurements of horizontal distances and elevations. These measurements may in turn be used to obtain slope-frequency distributions of lunar surfaces at various slope lengths and...

The photograph in figure 25-59 and the corresponding map (fig. 25-60) show the geology of part of the lunar surface just east of the Littrow rilles at the eastern edge of Mare Serenitatis. The most striking feature of the region is the extremely low albedo of the area mapped as Eld in the western half of the map. The low albedo is believed to be caused by a thin layer of pyroclastic...

Dr Lucchitta describes the geology of the Apollo 17 landing site in the Taurus-Littrow region of the Moon.

The Apollo 15 lunar module (LM) landed at longitude 03°39'20'' E, latitude 26°26'00'' N on the mare surface of Palus Putredinis on the eastern edge of the Imbrium Basin. The site is between the Apennine Mountain front and Hadley Rille. The objectives of the mission, in order of decreasing priority, were description and sampling of three major geologic features—the Apennine Front, Hadley...

The materials of most light or terra plains predate the lunar maria and postdate the Imbrian event. In the vicinity of the Imbrium Basin, these materials have been called the Cayley Formation (ref. 29-3) but because of the subtle diversity of the terra plains over the near side, Whilhelms and McCauley (ref. 29-4) simply called these materials Imbrian plains (Ip). The age relationships...

The discovery that samples returned from the Cayley Formation at the Apollo 16 landing site consist mainly of nonvolcanic breccias (secs. 6 and 7 of this report) suggests that the hypothesis in which light plains-forming materials may be ejecta from multi-ring basins should be reevaluated (refs 29-15 to 29-17). Improved information on the morphology and distribution of the Cayley...

Study of the sinuous Hadley Rille (fig. 25-45) was a primary goal of the Apollo 15 mission. Local geology of the rille near the landing site is described in section 5 of this report. Preliminary study of orbital photography from Hasselblad, metric, and panoramic cameras makes possible a description of some regional relationships of the rille. Considerable use is also made of a...

Apollo 16 metric photographs taken at low to high Sun angles (from approximately 7° to 40°) provide the first stereographic coverage of the distinctive landforms collectively referred to as "Imbrium sculpture" (refs. 29-40 and 29-41). The sculpture consists of a series of nearly linear ridges and troughs extending radially outward for more than 1000 km from the rim of the Imbrium Basin...