Book Chapters

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...

The Apollo 16 crew photographed an unusual variety of impact craters, including the two craters produced by the impacts of Ranger 7 and 9 spacecraft, small craters produced by boulders as they bounced downslope, craters with marked bilateral symmetry, and primary craters with a wide range of morphologies and sizes. Ranger impact craters and examples of other craters are discussed briefly...

Morphometric analysis of lunar craters (ref. 29-75) complements the more traditional photointerpretive study of crater morphology. These two indirect approaches to the scientific investigation of lunar craters continue to be productive because the preferred alternative method, direct field examination of specific large craters, is not being undertaken in the current series of manned...

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 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...

Orbital and surface photography collected during the Apollo 16 mission can be used to calibrate existing Earth-based, high-resolution radar maps of the lunar surface. The absence of any theoretical treatment of the radar backscatter from irregular rocks has prevented the assignment of radar-echo cross sections to specific size distributions of rocks. This gap will now be filled with the...

Heiligenschein is the upsurge in reflected brightness as zero-phase angle is approached. For the first time, an effort has been made to investigate the diagnostic value of the heiligenschein photometric magnitude on a statistically significant scale. This investigation was performed by using the vertical photography of the Apollo 16 metric camera. The brightness surge of reflected light...

The Apollo 15 and 16 metric and panoramic cameras have provided photographs for accurate topographic portrayal of the lunar surface using photogrammetric methods. In turn, quantitative morphologic analyses of topographic results are invaluable aids in the interpretation of the geologic processes.

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...

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 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...