Jessie Ortiz

Joseph Fredriksz
Giselle Rodriguez
Jiheng Zhang
Benjamin Xue
Kai Hua
Denise Arroyo

Target–Aitken Basin: the largest impact crater on the moon, located near the Lunar South Pole
on the far side. No human spacecrafts have landed there until the beginning of 2019. Much data
was collected from this 2019 mission, which helped scientists to gain better understanding on
the subsurface structure and components of the lunar regolith.

Hypothesis: If… then…

● If an asteroid resulted in the one of the largest impact crater’s on the moon, the Aitken
basin crater, then it probably has an origin from the early formation of our solar system
(~4.571 billion years approx.)

Instruments to test hypothesis:

● Rover to collect samples of the basin, use absolute dating
● Infrared imaging
● Other various spectrometers

Potential result that can prove hypothesis right/wrong:

If we find remnants of the original asteroid within the crater, we can date it to see its relative age
compared to the moon.
Size of the crater: the larger the impactor the more likely its from the early solar
system/formation of the moon, as bigger objects were more common during that time period.
If we find other explanations for the formation of the basin e.g. basalt formation/volcanic activity

What kind of data you expect to get:

● Compositional data from basin and asteroid using spectrometers
● Geologic data from imaging (size of crater)
● Physical samples from basin and asteroid using tools