Abstract
[1] The Moscoviense basin is the most prominent mare basalt filled impact basin on the farside highlands of the Moon. The Moscoviense basin has been studied extensively because of its characteristic geological and mineralogical context and distinct mare volcanism. The success of Kaguya's direct farside gravity recovery and global laser altimetry revealed that the Moscoviense basin shows unique characteristics not only for geological and mineralogical but also for the geophysical contexts. We measured geomorphological features of the Moscoviense basin and the asymmetry suggests an oblique impact formation process. Moho undulation beneath the Moscoviense basin, however, can hardly be explained by a single oblique impact formation process. We propose an alternative hypothesis for the Moscoviense basin formation, which is called “double impact scenario”. This scenario simultaneously accounts for the anomalously large mantle plug, asymmetric surface geo-morphology and excavation of olivine rich material originally located beneath the thickest crust on the Moon. On the basis of a set of Monte-Carlo simulations, we statistically examine the occurrence of a small spatial separation of two nearby basins. The probability of double impact, as seen on the Moscoviense basin where the two impacts occurred ∼80 km apart, is estimated to be about 50%.
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