Impact Melt Facies in the Moon's Crisium Basin: Identifying, Characterizing, and Future Radiogenic Dating

Abstract

Both Earth and the Moon share a common history regarding the epoch of large basin formation, though only the lunar geologic record preserves any appreciable record of this Late Heavy Bombardment. The emergence of Earth's first life is approximately contemporaneous with the Late Heavy Bombardment; understanding the latter informs the environmental conditions of the former, which are likely necessary to constrain the mechanisms of abiogenesis. While the relative formation time of most of the Moon's large basins is known, the absolute timing is not. The timing of Crisium Basin's formation is one of many important events that must be constrained and would require identifying and dating impact melt formed in the Crisium event. To inform a future lunar sample dating mission, we thus characterized possible outcrops of impact melt. We determined that several mare lava-embayed kipukas could contain impact melt, though the rim and central peaks of the partially lava-flooded Yerkes Crater likely contain the most pure and intact Crisium impact melt. It is here where future robotic and/or human missions could confidently add a key missing piece to the puzzle of the combined issues of early Earth-Moon bombardment and the emergence of life.