Mare Frigoris Constellation Region of Interest

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Caption:

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image of the floor of a l.2-km diameter crater in the Mare Frigoris Constellation Region of Interest .

Samples from small, relatively fresh craters like the one above may someday help us learn more about Mare Frigoris and its place in lunar geologic history. Mare Frigoris is located on the lunar nearside, to the north of the Imbrium and Serenitatis basins. Instead of being low in reflectance like typical mare basalts, its reflectance is intermediate between the mare to the south and highlands terrain to the north. This is likely due to a lower iron and titanium content than any of the sampled mare basalts, making it an intriguing end-member in the spectrum of lunar mare volcanism.

Background Info:

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center built and manages the mission for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera was designed to acquire data for landing site certification and to conduct polar illumination studies and global mapping. Operated by Arizona State University, LROC consists of a pair of narrow-angle cameras (NAC) and a single wide-angle camera (WAC). The mission is expected to return over 70 terabytes of image data.

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