Yutu-2 Radar Sounding Evidence of a Buried Crater at Chang’E-4 Landing Site

Abstract

Buried craters within tens of meters of lunar regolith are rarely studied but are significant for understanding the evolution of surface processes on the Moon. Here, we first report the evidence of an intact buried crater within the layered strata at Chang’E-4 (CE-4) landing site revealed by the lunar penetrating radar (LPR). The time–frequency comparative analysis method based on the variational mode decomposition (VMD) and the rock quantitative analysis method based on the local unit correlation (LUC) are proposed and applied to the processing and analysis of LPR data within 15 lunar days. The results presented by the two methods provide evidence of a buried crater at the CE-4 landing site and simultaneously reveal the rock-concentrated structure within the buried crater. According to the results, it is considered that the filling materials within the buried crater have survived the impaction and gardening during the formation of the overlying fine-grained regolith. Recent works have proposed that the near-surface material at the CE-4 landing site is mainly the lunar mantle materials excavated from the nearby Finsen crater. Therefore, the buried crater probably preserves the initial lunar mantle materials.