Brisbane Z’s Australean Wrinkle Ridge

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Caption:

A beautiful wrinkle ridge within Brisbane Z crater in Mare Australe. Image width is 500 m and illumination is from the left, LROC NAC M134714924L.

This wrinkle ridge is located within the crater Brisbane Z, at 52.72°S, 73.13°E. Brisbane Z is a mare-flooded crater within Mare Australe. Wrinkle ridges are one of several styles of tectonic deformation present on the Moon, and occur primarily in the maria. Wrinkle ridges are the result of contractional forces, and in the maria, these forces are believed to be from the weight of the basalts extruded onto the surface. The same reasoning explains why wrinkle ridges are sometimes found in mare-flooded craters, where similar contractional forces are present at a smaller scale.

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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