Descartes Highlands
Apollo 16 landing site in the lunar highlands.
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NASA Johnson Space Center · Public domain
In early 1972, the American Apollo 16 mission touched down on a near-side lunar highland region known as the Descartes Highlands.[1] This region takes its name from the nearby Descartes crater, around which it is situated.[1]
Quick Facts
- Location
- Near side of the Moon, surrounding Descartes crater
- Landing mission
- Apollo 16 (early 1972)
- Astronauts who landed
- John Young and Charles Duke
- Primary geological formations
- Cayley Formation and Descartes Formation
- Key sampled craters
- North Ray and South Ray craters
- Pre-mission hypothesis
- Volcanic origin (later disproved)
- Determined origin
- Meteor impact and breccias
Facts from the source article.
Key facts and history
The terrain there is rolling and uneven, dotted with both ancient and more recent craters that have crisp rims.[2] Prior to the Apollo 16 mission's sample collection, scientists expected to find a large quantity of volcanic rock in the Descartes Highlands.[3] Subsequent laboratory analysis of the returned samples overturned that hypothesis.[3] Instead of volcanic rocks, the analysis showed that most specimens from the area are breccias—aggregates of rock fragments from multiple lunar impacts.[3]
The Descartes Highlands was chosen for Apollo 16 so that astronauts John Young and Charles Duke could gather samples from the extensive Descartes and Cayley formations.[2]
What the cited sources add
North Ray and South Ray craters were prioritized because material from prominent formations had been naturally excavated there.[2] John Young, the Apollo 16 commander, noted that the glass coating on certain crater floors resembled dried mud in its pattern.[2] In July 1971, Young and Duke traveled to Sudbury, Ontario, Canada to study shatter cones in preparation for their mission.[3] The craters North Ray and South Ray exhibited a layered structure, which may indicate that the Cayley and Descartes formations overlap.[4]
Glass covering some crater floors was similar in character to the glass observed at the Apollo 17 landing site in Taurus-Littrow.[2] A key objective was to find and retrieve samples of ancient highland rock that predated the Imbrium impact event.[2]
References
- Wikipedia, "Descartes Highlands" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Apollo 16 Landing Site", The Apollo Program (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Descartes Highlands" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Apollo 16 Mission Landing Site Overview", Apollo 16 Mission (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Descartes Highlands" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Taylor, "Composition of the Descartes region, lunar highlands", Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, December 1973, p. 2665–2683 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Descartes Highlands" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Bussey, "Compositional Studies of the Orientale, Humorum, Nectaris, and Crisium Lunar Basins", Journal of Geophysical Research, 25 February 2000, p. 4241; "Apollo 16 Landing Site", The Apollo Program (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Descartes Highlands (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Descartes Highlands (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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